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LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


J3D 
BY 


^48Z3^c^c 


'-{ 


j^ortljiDestern  Uniticr^itv 


THE  N.  W.  HARRIS  LECTURES 
FOR  1907 


%\)t  i^.  Wi.  l^arris;  ilectureg 

•were  founded  in  1900  throug-h  the  generosity  of  Mr. 
Norman  Wait  Harris  of  Chicago,  and  are  to  be  given 
annually.  The  purpose  of  the  lecture  foundation  is, 
as  expressed  by  the  donor,  "  to  stimulate  scientific 
research  of  the  highest  type  and  to  bring  the  results 
of  such  research  before  the  students  and  friends  of 
Northwestern  University,  and  through  them  to  the 
world.  By  the  terra  'scientific  research '  is  meaut 
scholarly  investigation  into  any  department  of  human 
thought  or  effort  without  limitation  to  research  in  the 
so-called  natural  sciences,  but  with  a  desire  that  such 
investigation  should  be  extended  to  cover  the  whole 
field  of  human  knowledge." 


PERSONALISM 


BY 


BORDEN  PARKER  BOWNE 


BOSTON   AND  NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

1908 


COPYRIGHT    1908   BY   BORDEN   P.    BOWNE 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 

Published  February  rqo8 


PREFACE 

Early  in  the  last  century,  M.  Comte,  the 
founder  of  French  positivism,  set  forth  his  fa- 
mous doctrine  of  the  three  stages  of  human 
thought.  Man  begins,  he  said,  in  the  theologi- 
cal stage,  when  all  phenomena  are  referred  to 
wills,  either  in  things  or  beyond  them.  After 
a  while,  through  the  discovery  of  law,  the  ele- 
ment of  caprice  and  arbitrariness,  and  thus  of 
will,  is  ruled  out,  and  men  pass  to  the  second, 
or  metaphysical  stage.  Here  they  explain  phe- 
nomena by  abstract  conceptions  of  being,  sub- 
stance, cause,  and  the  like.  But  these  meta- 
physical conceptions  are  really  only  the  ghosts 
of  the  earlier  theological  notions,  and  disappear 
upon  criticism.  When  this  is  seen,  thought 
passes  into  the  third  and  last  stage  of  develop- 
ment, the  positive  stage.  Here  men  give  up 
all  inquiry  into  metaphysics  as  bootless,  and 
content  themselves  with  discovering  and  regis- 
tering the  uniformities  of  coexistence  and 
sequence  among   phenomena.  When   this  is 


vi  PREFACE 

done  we  have  accomplished  all  that  is  possible 
in  the  nature  of  the  case.  Metaphysics  is  ruled 
out  as  a  source  of  barren  and  misleading  illu- 
sions, and  science  is  installed  in  its  place  as  a 
study  of  the  uniformities  of  coexistence  and 
sequence  which  are  revealed  in  experience. 

In  this  view  Comte  was  partly  right  and 
partly  wrong.  By  explanation  Comte  under- 
stood causal  explanation,  and  he  was  quite  right 
in  pointing  out  that  explanation  in  terms  of 
personality  is  the  one  with  which  men  begin. 
He  was  equally  right  in  saying  that  abstract 
metaphysics  is  only  the  ghost  of  the  earlier  per- 
sonal explanations.  Later  philosophic  criticism 
has  shown  that  the  conceptions  of  impersonal 
metaphysics  are  only  the  abstract  forms  of  the 
self-conscious  life,  and  that  apart  from  that  life 
they  are  empty  and  illusory.  Comte  was  equally 
right  in  restricting  positive  science  to  the  in- 
vestigation and  registration  of  the  orders  of 
coexistence  and  sequence  in  experience.  But 
he  was  wrong  in  making  caprice  and  arbitrari- 
ness essential  marks  of  will,  and  equally  wrong 
in  rejecting  all  causal  inquiry.  The  history  of 


PREFACE  vii 

thought  has  judged  his  doctrine  in  this  respect. 
Causal  inquiry,  though  driven  out  with  a  fork, 
has  always  come  running  back,  and  always  will. 
It  only  remains  to  give  the  causal  doctrine  the 
form  which  is  necessary  to  free  it  from  the  ob- 
jections of  criticism. 

The  aim  of  these  lectures  is  to  show  that 
critical  reflection  brings  us  back  again  to  the 
personal  metaphysics  which  Comte  rejected. 
We  agree  with  him  that  abstract  and  imper- 
sonal metaphysics  is  a  mirage  of  formal  ideas, 
and  even  largely  of  words,  which  begin,  con- 
tinue, and  end  in  abstraction  and  confusion. 
Causal  explanation  must  always  be  in  terms  of 
personality,  or  it  must  vanish  altogether.  Thus 
we  return  to  the  theological  stage,  but  we  do  so 
with  a  difference.  At  last  we  have  learned  the 
lesson  of  law,  and  we  now  see  that  law  and  will 
must  be  united  in  our  thought  of  the  world. 
Thus  man's  earliest  metaphysics  reemerges  in 
his  latest ;  but  enlarged,  enriched,  and  purified 
by  the  ages  of  thought  and  experience. 

In  war  the  success  of  a  campaign  seldom 
depends  solely  upon  sheer  flighting  and  direct 


viii  PREFACE 

assaults  upon  the  enemy's  position.  It  often 
depends  equally,  and  even  more  fundamentally, 
upon  seizing  and  holding  certain  strategic  po- 
sitions which  may  command  the  enemy's  com- 
munications, or  threaten  his  rear,  or  make  his 
position  untenable.  Intellectual  campaigns  are 
subject  to  the  same  law.  They  are  commonly 
decided  at  points  quite  remote  from  the  appar- 
ent battlefield,  and  without  any  "  thunder  of 
the  captains  and  the  shoutings."  These  are 
the  strategic  points  that  command  the  field  and 
decide  the  day.  They  lie  in  our  epistemology 
and  metaphysics  —  subjects  which  seem  to 
have  little  or  no  practical  bearing,  yet  out  of 
them  are  the  issues  of  intellectual  life  or  death. 
Our  notions  of  knowledge  and  its  nature, 
our  conception  of  reality  and  causality,  our 
thoughts  respecting  space  and  time,  —  the 
two  great  intimidating  phantoms,  —  these  are 
the  things  that  decide  our  general  way  of 
thinking  and  give  direction  to  our  thought 
even  in  morals  and  relig'ion.  Some  harmless- 
looking  doctrine  is  put  forth  in  epistemology, 
and  soon  there  is  an  ajrnostic  chill  in  the  air 


PREFACE  ix 

that  is  fatal  to  the  highest  spiritual  faiths  of 
the  soul,  or  some  seusual  blight  and  mildew 
spread  over  the  fairer  growths  of  our  nature. 
Space  and  time  are  made  supreme  laws  of  ex- 
istence, and  determinism  and  materialism  and 
atheism  are  at  the  door.  This  g'eneral  fact  ex- 
plains  the  form  of  the  campaign.  The  "  thun- 
der of  the  captains  and  the  shoutings "  are 
omitted,  in  order  to  deal  with  the  questions 
which  both  experience  and  reflection  show  to 
be  the  really  strategic  points  in  philosophic 
discussion. 

BORDEN   P.  BOWNE. 

February  1,  1908. 


CONTENTS 

I.  COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  AND  PHILOSOPHY  1 

II.  THE  PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  54 

HI.   PHENOMENALITY  OF  THE  PHYSICAL  WORLD  111 

IV.  MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  159 

V.  THE  FAILURE  OF  BIPERSONALISM  217 

VI.  THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  268 


PERSONALISM 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  AND 
PHILOSOPHY 

Common  sense  has  always  thought  rather 
meanly  of  philosophy,  either  as  losing  itself 
in  abstract  verbiage  which  makes  no  connec- 
tion with  reality,  or  else  as  falling  into  dan- 
gerous and  destructive  errors.  Aristophanes, 
wishing  to  deride  philosophy,  represented  So- 
crates as  floating  in  the  clouds  and  uttering  a 
deal  of  nonsense,  which  was  supposed  to  be 
philosophical.  And  we  are  all  familiar  with 
the  formula  which  refers  to  "science,"  that 
is,  philosophy,  "  falsely  so-called,"  and  which 
couples  "  philosophy  and  vain  deceit "  in  a 
way  not  intended  to  be  complimentary. 
Goethe  expressed  the  same  opinion  when  he 
made  Mephistopheles  say,  "  A  speculating  fel- 
low is  like  a  beast  on  a  blasted  heath  led  round 
in  circles  by  an  evil  spirit,  while  all  about  are 


2  PERSONALISM 

pastures  fair  and  green."  Milton  is  even  more 
pronounced,  for  he  mentions  philosophizing- 
as  one  of  the  pursuits  of  hell.  One  group  of 
devils  is  described  as  holding  high  debate  over 

"  Fixed  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute, 
And  found  no  end,  in  wandering  mazes  lost." 

Much  of  this  popular  opinion  is  due  to  ig- 
norance, but  the  warmest  friend  of  philosophy 
must  admit  that  there  is  also  much  in  the  his- 
tory of  thought  to  justify  the  popular  view. 
Philosophers  themselves  are  not  always  clear  as 
to  their  own  meaning,  and  have  often  spoken 
a  language  "not  understanded  of  the  people." 
Nonsense  and  pernicious  errors  mingle  in  about 
equal  proportions  in  philosophical  literature. 
Many  a  navigator  has  sailed  away  over  the 
misty  seas  of  speculation  and  never  come  back ; 
and  many  an  ambitious  climber,  imitating  the 
"Excelsior"  youth,  has  climbed  out  of  sight 
and  never  returned  to  earth  again.  Fogbanks 
have  often  been  mistaken  for  land,  and  islands 
of  mist  have  passed  for  solid  continents.  A 
fearful  proportion  of  philosophical  discussion 
at  best  is  barren  and  often  pernicious.     Prob- 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY      3 

ably  nine  tenths  of  the  treatises  on  this  subject 
might  be  burned  up  without  any  loss  to  the 
world,  and  with  some  small  gain  to  the  fuel 
pile.  Could  the  good  Caliph  Omar  return  to 
life  and  make  a  bonfire  of  our  philosophical 
literature,  as  he  did  of  the  Alexandrian  library, 
it  would  not  be  an  unmitigated  calamity. 

And  this  is  no  judgment  of  outsiders 
merely,  but  of  philosophers  themselves.  The 
ever-recurrent  outbreaks  of  skepticism  and 
agnosticism  among  them  remind  us  of  the 
instability  of  the  philosophical  structure  ;  and 
just  now  the  pragmatists,  distantly  echoing 
Kant's  doctrine  of  the  primacy  of  the  practi- 
cal reason,  are  pointing  out  what  sorry  stuff 
the  traditional  philosophy  is,  and  more  in  sor- 
row than  in  anger,  as  in  true  friendship  bound, 
are  inflictins"  numerous  "  faithful  wounds." 
It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  common  sense 
should  propose  to  throw  philosophy,  along 
with  physic,  to  the  dogs  and  have  none  of  it. 

We  might  well  conclude,  then,  that  we 
should  let  philosophy  alone,  as  at  best  a  use- 
less  science.    Unfortunately  this   cannot    be 


4  PERSONALISM 

done.  Every  one  has  a  philosophy  of  some  sort, 
wittingly  or  unwittingly.  Every  one  has  some 
notions  about  reality,  the  nature  of  things,  the 
meaning  and  outcome  of  life,  and  the  like ; 
and  these  constitute  his  philosophy.  Monsieur 
Jourdain  in  Moliere's  play,  as  you  remember, 
talked  prose  all  his  life  without  knowing  it, 
and  many  persons  do  the  same  thing  with 
philosophy.  For  philosophy  is  simply  an 
attempt  to  give  an  account  of  experience,  or 
it  is  a  man's  way  of  looking  at  things.  The 
common-sense  man  finds  a  lot  of  bodies  about 
him  in  space  and  a  series  of  changes  going  on 
in  time,  and  in  these  he  rests  as  final.  That  is 
his  philosophy.  The  materialist  conceives  that 
the  world  of  experience  can  be  explained  by 
molecules  and  atoms,  endowed  with  forces  of 
attraction  and  repulsion  which  work  forever 
through  space  and  time.  That  is  his  philoso- 
phy. The  agnostic  holds  that  we  can  know 
nothing  beyond  phenomena.  The  causal  power 
behind  is  forever  hidden.  That  is  his  philoso- 
phy. The  theist  holds  that  the  order  of  things 
can  be  explained  only  by  an  intelligent  cause 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY     5 

back  of  all  appearance  and  manifestation. 
That  is  his  philosophy.  But  every  one  has  a 
philosophy  of  some  sort,  implicit  or  explicit, 
and  commonly  he  is  all  the  more  controlled 
by  it  the  less  he  is  aware  of  its  presence.  If 
men  could  and  would  let  philosophy  alone  I 
sometimes  think  I  should  be  willing  to  have 
them  do  so ;  for  there  is  a  great  deal  of  false 
and  pernicious  philosophizing.  We  might  even 
say  that  strait  is  the  gate  and  narrow  is  the 
way  that  leadeth  to  philosophical  insight,  and 
few  there  be  that  find  it;  while  wide  is  the 
gate  and  broad  the  way  that  leads  to  philo- 
sophical confusion  and  destruction,  and  many 
there  be  who  go  in  thereat.  But  since  we 
must  have  a  philosophy,  whether  we  will  or 
not,  it  is  important  that  we  get  the  best.  If 
we  do  not  sow  good  seed  the  enemy  will  sow 
tares,  and  by  and  by  we  have  to  reap  the  tares 
that  have  been  sown.  The  whole  system  of 
naturalistic  thought,  with  its  materialistic  and 
atheistic  tendencies,  is  but  the  outcome  of  the 
crude  metaphysics  of  common  sense,  and  it 
can  be  permanently  overthrown  only  by  dis- 


6  PERSONALISM 

crediting  that  metaphysics.  So  long  as  space 
and  time  and  matter  and  force  are  openly  or 
tacitly  assumed  to  be  the  standard  realities, 
or  the  standards  of  reality,  there  will  always 
be  a  root  of  bitterness  in  our  speculation 
which  will  spring  up  again  and  again  to 
annoy  us. 

It  is  not,  then,  a  question  of  having  or  not 
having  a  philosophy,  but  of  having  a  good  or 
a  bad  one.  And  this  question  is  of  great  prac- 
tical importance,  for,  while  a  good  philosophy 
may  not  have  much  positive  value,  a  bad  one 
may  do  measureless  harm.  Nations  may  be 
paralyzed,  and  individuals  may  be  wrecked, 
by  a  fatalistic  and  pessimistic  philosophy.  A 
sense  philosophy  may  tend  to  mildew  the  life 
of  a  peojjle  and  cast  discredit  upon  all  the 
spiritual  aspirations  of  man.  An  agnostic 
philosophy  may  paralyze  both  the  mental  and 
moral  nature  and  leave  men  thwarted  and 
despairing  in  impenetrable  darkness.  The 
most  destructive  errors  that  have  devastated 
humanity  have  been  rooted  in  philosophy,  and 
many  of  the  worst  aberrations  of  religion  run 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,   PHILOSOPHY      7 

back  to  some  philosophical  doctrine  as  either 
their  source  or  their  justification.  And  a  little 
reflection  shows  that  philosophy  is  no  unim- 
portant affair.  It  would  not  be  a  serious  mat- 
ter if  we  made  an  error  in  our  theory  of  the 
double  stars,  or  if  we  mistook  the  order  of 
the  geological  strata,  or  blundered  in  the 
atomic  weights  of  some  of  the  elements ;  but 
it  would  be  a  very  serious  matter  if  we  went 
astray  in  those  fundamental  conceptions  of 
life,  its  worth  and  destiny,  with  which  philo- 
sophy deals.  It  would  be  a  serious  matter  if 
philosophy  reached  a  conception  of  life  and 
the  world  which  was  incompatible  with  those 
high  faiths  of  humanity  by  which  hitherto 
nations  have  nourished  themselves  into  great- 
ness and  men  have  nobly  lived  and  bravely 
died.  Would  it,  then,  make  no  difference  to 
personal  life  or  to  civilization  if  we  should 
replace  these  faiths  by  materialism  or  atheism? 
Could  we  safely  exchange  our  Christian  phi- 
losophy for  that  of  India  ?  Would  life  go  on 
just  as  well  if,  with  the  agnostic,  we  decided 
to  restrict  all  thought  to  things  seen  and  tern- 


8  PERSONALISM 

poral,  and  forbade  any  reference  to  the  unseen 
and  eternal  ?  These  questions  answer  them- 
selves. Mr.  Spencer  in  his  last  work,  "  Facts 
and  Comments,"  seems  not  to  have  weakened 
in  his  agnostic  conviction,  but  he  advises  the 
skeptic  not  to  say  too  much  about  agnosti- 
cism ;  as  faith  is  a  comfort  to  many  who  have 
no  other  support.  Such  considerations  show 
that  philosophy  is  not  a  matter  of  practical 
indifference.  It  may  not  "  bake  bread  for  us," 
it  has  been  said,  "  but  it  gives  us  God,  free- 
dom, and  immortality  ; "  and,  we  may  add,  it 
gives  even  the  bread  which  it  does  not  bake 
a  savor  it  would  not  otherwise  possess. 

We  need,  then,  a  sound  philosophy  at  least 
as  a  kind  of  intellectual  health  officer  whose 
business  it  is  to  keep  down  disease-breeding 
miasms  and  pestiferous  growths,  or  as  a  moral 
police  whose  duty  it  is  to  arrest  those  dan- 
gerous and  disturbing  intellectual  vagrants 
which  have  no  visible  means  of  support,  and 
which  corrupt  the  people. 

This  negative  function  is  very  important. 
A  great  crop  of  errors  readily  springs  up  on 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY     9 

the  plain  of  sense  and  mechanical  thought. 
In  this  way  sensualism,  materialism,  atheism, 
like  weeds,  are  sure  to  grow  unless  there  be  a 
philosophy  of  higher  character  to  keep  them 
down.  These  lower  philosophies  tend  to  usurp 
possession  of  the  mind;  and  in  their  presence 
the  higher  faiths  of  the  soul  soon  wither  and 
perish.  And  these  lower  views  cannot  be  dis- 
pelled by  authority,  but  only  by  a  careful 
examination  of  their  philosophical  founda- 
tions. Then  they  are  seen  in  their  baselessness 
and  fatuity.  Positively,  philosophy  has  the 
function  of  formulating  and  systematizing  life 
\y  and  experience  so  as  to  bring  out  into  clear 
consciousness  our  aims  and  principles.  It  must 
close  up  the  ways  of  error  and  open  the  high- 
ways of  progress.  With  all  its  shortcomings, 
philosophy  deserves  well  of  humanity  in  this 
respect.  It  has  driven  away  nightmares  and 
enabled  us  to  see  visions.  Only  a  good  philo- 
sophy can  displace  a  bad  one. 

The  generation  just  passed  had  abundant 
illustration  of  the  practical  importance  of  phi- 
losophy.  That  was  a  time  of  great  develop- 


10  PERSONALISM 

ment  in  the  physical  sciences  and  in  the  com- 
mercial application  of  science  to  our  control 
o£  nature.  There  were  great  generalizations  in 
physics,  such  as  the  conservation  of  energy, 
and  the  correlation  of  the  physical  forces ; 
and  equally  great  generalizations  in  biology. 
The  application  of  scientific  method  to  histor- 
ical study,  also,  and  the  ever-widening  dis- 
covery of  law,  leading  to  the  belief  in  its  uni- 
versal reign,  had  great  influence.  New  facts 
crowded  upon  us  and  new  interjjretations  were 
demanded.  The  old  mental  equilibrium  was 
broken  up  and  the  new  one  had  not  yet  been 
established.  The  new  wine  of  science  and  evo- 
lution went  to  the  head  and  produced  many 
woes  and  more  babblings.  It  was  a  matter  of 
course"  that  at  such  time  religion  should  seem 
to  be  imperiled.  To  the  passive  mind  even 
new  truth  seems  dangerous  until  it  has  be- 
come familiar.  All  who  had  any  grudge  against 
religion  loudly  proclaimed  its  baselessness,  and 
many  who  were  interested  in  religion  were 
profoundly  disturbed  by  the  new  order.  Every- 
thing^ seemed  to  be  in   solution.    The  foun- 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    11 

tains  of  the  great  deep  were  broken  up.  The 
elements  melted  with  fervent  heat,  and  some 
things  passed  away  with  a  great  noise.  Natural- 
ism came  to  the  front  with  a  mechanical  phi- 
losophy, and  commercialism  tended  to  fix  all 
eyes  on  gain  as  even  better  than  godliness. 
The  latter  produced  a  feeling  that  we  could 
do  just  as  well  without  religion  as  with  it, 
and  the  former  found  no  place  for  it.  It  was 
proclaimed  by  many,  and  feared  by  more, 
that  the  high  hopes  and  dreams  of  humanity 
were  baseless.  The  truth  about  man  had  been 
found  out,  and  the  truth  was  that  instead 
of  being  a  child  of  the  Highest  he  is  merely 
the  highest  of  the  animals,  having  essen- 
tially the  same  history  and  destiny  as  they,  — 
birth,  hunger,  labor,  weariness,  and  death. 
Man  was  viewed  as  simply  an  incident  in  the 
condensation  of  dispersed  matter,  or  the  cool- 
ing of  a  fiery  gas. 

For  a  time  the  religious  world  was  in  a  con- 
dition of  stampede  and  panic,  but  after  a  while 
it  became  clear  that  the  difficulty  lay  not  in 
the  facts  themselves  but  in  the  philosophy  by 


12  PERSONALISM 

which  they  were  explained.  The  great  source 
of  the  disturbance  of  that  time,  apart  from 
the  horror  of  change  natural  to  the  passive 
mind,  was  the  lack  of  any  adequate  philosophic 
equipment.  The  new  facts  were  interpreted  on 
the  basis  of  a  crude  sense-realism,  and  this 
view  has  always  had  a  tendency  to  materialism 
and  atheism.  But  now  that  we  have  a  better 
critical  apparatus  the  difficulties  have  disap- 
peared. We  are  now  able  to  live  in  peace  and 
quietness  with  the  facts  once  thought  so 
threatening,  and  we  look  back  on  that  period 
of  panic  only  to  wonder  at  the  superficiality 
that  caused  it.  We  smile  at  the  naive  dog- 
matism and  the  extraordinary  logic  of  the 
movement.  Had  we  had  a  generation  ago  our 
present  philosophical  equipment  there  would 
have  been  no  flurry  over  evolution,  the  trans- 
formation of  species,  the  reign  of  law,  and  the 
many  other  things  which  were  supposed  to  be 
fatal  to  man's  higher  faiths.  The  storm  we 
had  was  part  of  the  price  we  paid  for  being 
philosophically  unprepared. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  philosophy  is  practically 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    13 

important.  It  is  not  necessary,  of  course,  that 
everybody  should  be  a  philosopher,  any  more 
than  that  everybody  should  be  a  physician  or 
a  lawyer,  but  just  as  it  is  important  that  these 
professions  should  be  represented  in  the  com- 
munity so  that  all  may  share  in  their  advan- 
tages, so  it  is  equally  important  that  philoso- 
phy should  be  represented  in  the  thought  of 
a  community,  and  without  it  there  is  no  se- 
curity against  all  manner  of  superstitions  and 
intellectual  aberrations.  Religion,  conscience, 
and  even  intellect  itself  grovel  or  fall  into 
\y  vagaries  when  not  subject  to  critical  super- 
vision. But  it  is  equally  clear  from  a  survey 
of  conditions  that  philosophers  themselves 
need  to  bring  forth  fruits  meet  for  repent- 
ance, if  their  science  is  to  receive  general 
respect.  Some  improvement  in  this  direction 
may  be  hoped  for  from  the  pragmatists'  criti- 
cism. We  need  to  pay  more  attention  to  first 
principles  and  to  practical  bearing  and  out- 
come. Mr.  Huxley  tells  of  an  Irish  cabman 
who  was  told  to  drive  fast.  Without  waiting 
to  inquire  where  he  was  to  go,  he  drove  off 


14  PERSONALISM 

furiously.  When  the  passenger  asked  him 
where  he  was  going  he  replied,  "  Oi  don't 
know,  yer  hanner,  but  annyway  Oi  'm  drivin' 
fast."  One  is  often  reminded  of  this  good  man 
in  reading  current  philosophical  literature. 

Philosophers  themselves  by  no  means  always 
clearly  understand  their  own  aims,  and  the 
teachers  of  the  science  are  sometimes  confused 
as  to  its  meaning  and  contents.  It  cannot  be 
doubted  that  a  great  deal  of  time  and  strength 
is  wasted  in  philosophical  study  because  of 
misdirection  and  failure  properly  to  analyze 
the  problems.  Teachers  often  lose  themselves 
in  details  and  reach  no  insight  into  the  essen- 
tial questions.  Even  distinguished  occupants 
of  philosophical  chairs  sometimes  come  under 
this  condemnation.  They  are  experts  in  the 
bibliography  and  biography  of  the  subject. 
They  are  full  of  information  on  the  editions 
and  the  commentaries,  and  in  short  seem  to 
know  everything  about  philosophy  but  phi- 
losophy itself.  The  scholastics  distinguished 
"  knowledge  of  the  thing  "  from  "  knowledge 
about  the  thing,"  and  the  latter  is  what  we 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    15 

too  often  find  when  we  are  lookino-  for  the 
former.  The  principle  which  gives  meaning 
and  unity  to  the  whole  is  missed  altogether, and 
any  criticism  which  may  be  made  is  "  unprin- 
cipled "  and  superficial  in  consequence.  There 
is  abundant  knowledge  of  details,  but  when 
we  come  to  the  subject  itself  we  often  find 
some  naive  and  uncritical  dogmatism  or  per- 
haps no  idea  whatever;  and  sometimes  it  is 
even  held  to  be  a  mark  of  especial  mental 
breadth  to  have  no  system  at  all ;  as  if  the 
'-^/inability  to  think  organically  and  consistently 
were  a  sure  sign  of  greatness.  Such  philoso- 
phers are  strong  on  the  history  of  philoso- 
phy. They  remind  us  that  we  can  understand 
a  thing  only  by  studying  its  evolution.  As  if 
a  man  could  write  edifyingly  upon  the  his- 
tory of  a  subject  which  he  did  not  himself 
thoroughly  understand ;  or  as  if  a  man  could 
read  to  much  edification  the  history  of  a  sub- 
ject of  which  he  knew  nothing.  The  only 
result  would  be  barren  superficialities  in  the 
work  and  a  fluency  of  speech  without  under- 
standinof  in  the  reader. 


16  PERSONALISM 

When  we  are  dealing  with  concrete  insti- 
tutions, legishxtion,  etc.,  there  is  truth  in  the 
claim  that  they  must  be  historically  studied 
for  their  complete  understanding ;  but  when 
we  are  dealing  with  the  formal  truths  of  in- 
telligence, they  are  to  be  understood  in  and 
through  themselves.  Any  student  of  average 
ability  can  be  made  to  see  the  truth  of  the 
binomial  theorem  by  reflection  upon  the  proof 
offered,  and  he  can  equally  well  learn  how  to 
apply  the  theorem  by  inspection  of  its  terms. 
In  neither  case  is  any  historical  study  needed 
for  insight,  though  it  might  be  interesting 
in  itself.  But  a  history  of  mathematics  as  an 
introduction  to  mathematics  would  not  tend 
to  edification.  Equally  inverted  pedagogically 
is  the  history  of  philosophy  as  an  introduc- 
tion to  philosophy.  Either  it  must  confine 
itself  to  worthless  platitudes  which  will  enable 
the  student  to  talk  without  understanding, 
or  it  must  be  as  unintelligible  as  a  history 
of  the  higher  mathematics  would  be  to  one 
who  had  never  studied  algebra.  While,  then, 
we   must   always   have   the   highest    respect 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    17 

for  the  historical  method,  it  manifestly  ap- 
plies to  some  things  better  than  to  some  other 
things,  and  we  must  not  allow  a  mechanical 
repetition  of  formulas  to  obscure  this  fact. 
The  men  who  have  helped  philosophy  forward 
have  seldom  been  men  learned  in  the  biblio- 
graphy of  the  science,  but  men  who  grap- 
pled with  the  problems  themselves.  Descartes, 
Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume,  Kant  are  illustra- 
^4ions.  Hobbes  said  that  if  he  had  read  as  much 
'as  some  of  the  stall-fed  philosophers  of  his 
time  he  should  have  known  as  little  as  they. 
Again,  philosophers,  from  failure  to  keep 
in  touch  with  reality,  have  often  run  into 
barren  elaborations  of  obvious  commonplace 
which  might  well  justify  the  contempt  of 
common  sense.  Here  logic  reminds  us  that 
explanations  which  leave  matters  as  dark  as 
ever  lose  from  that  fact  all  reason  for  exist- 
ence. Philosophers  sometimes  forget  this  and 
in  their  theoretic  zeal  for  their  formulas  un- 
wittingly give  awful  examples  of  theoretic 
obsession.  A  distinguished  philosopher  fur= 
nishes  us  with  illustrations. 


18  PERSONALISM 

How  does  a  child  learn  to  write  ?  To  most 
of  us  it  seems  sufficient  to  say  that  he  must 
try  and  try  again.  But  the  distinguished  phi- 
losopher gives  a  more  elaborate  account,  as 
follows :  — 

"  What  he  [the  child]  actually  does  is  to 
use  his  hand  in  a  great  many  possible  ways  as 
near  as  he  can  to  the  way  required ;  and  from 
these  excessively  produced  movements,  and 
after  excessively  varied  and  numerous  trials, 
he  gradually  selects  and  fixes  the  slight  suc- 
cesses made  in  the  direction  of  correct  writing. 
It  is  a  long  and  most  laborious  accumulation 
of  slight  functional  selections  from  overpro- 
duced movements." 

The  next  selection  is  still  more  profound, 
and  illuminates  a  deeper  mystery. 

"  Selective  thinking  is  the  result  of  motor 
accommodation  to  the  physical  and  social 
environment,  this  accommodation  taking  place 
in  each  case,  as  all  motor  accommodation  does, 
from  a  platform  of  earlier  ^  systematic  deter- 
mination '  or  habit.  In  the  sphere  of  the  phys- 
ical environment  as  such,  the  selection  is  from 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    19 

overproduced  movements  projected  out  from 
the  platform  of  the  habitual  adaptations  of 
the  members  brought  into  play ;  in  the  sphere 
of  the  social  environment  it  consists  in  the 
accommodation  of  the  attention,  secured  by  the 
overproduction  of  motor  variations  projected 
from  the  platform  of  the  habitual  attention 
complex.  The  presentations  from  which  the 
selected  motor  variations  issue  are  believed,  or 
called  ^  true,'  while  the  organization  which  the 
^^  motor  complex  gradually  attains  holds  the  data 
C^of  knowledge  in  relations  of  theoretical  and 
analytical  '  validity.'  " 

Fortunately  life  can  go  on  in  its  main  inter- 
ests on  a  less  complicated  platform  than  this. 
These  operose  and  stilted  elaborations  of  com- 
monplaces remind  one  of  the  man  mentioned 
by  Swift,  who,  thinking  that  the  ordinary 
method  of  being  measured  for  a  suit  of  clothes 
was  too  crude,  had  himself  surveyed  for  a  suit, 
as  much  more  scientific.  After  an  elaborate 
measurement  of  lines  and  angles  and  much 
intricate  calculation,  a  result  was  reached 
which  could  have  been  gained  directly  and 


20  PERSONALISM 

more  effectively  by  a  moment's  use  of  a  tape 
line. 

So,  then,  two  things  are  plain :  first,  the 
importance  of  philosophy,  and,  second,  the 
very  general  confusion  which  attaches  to  the 
subject,  not  only  in  popular  thought,  but  also 
in  the  minds  of  supposed  experts  themselves. 
The  first  step  out  of  this  confusion  must  lie 
in  seeking  to  reduce  it  and  help  to  a  better 
understanding  of  the  problem  by  looking  for 
some  starting-point  which  will  serve  as  a  com- 
mon ground  for  common  sense  and  philoso- 
phers of  all  schools,  something  on  which  all 
may  agree  as  a  point  of  departure. 

We  find  such  common  ground  in  the  fol- 
lowing postulates :  — 

First,  the  coexistence  of  persons.  It  is  a 
personal  and  social  world  in  which  we  live,  and 
with  which  all  speculation  must  begin.  We 
and  the  neighbors  are  facts  which  cannot  be 
questioned. 

Secondly,  there  is  a  law  of  reason  valid  for 
all  and  binding  upon  all.  This  is  the  supreme 
condition  of  any  mental  community. 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    21 

Thirdly,  there  is  a  world  of  common  expe- 
rience, actual  or  possible,  where  we  meet  in 
mutual  understanding,  and  where  the  great 
business  of  life  goes  on. 

These  conditions  commend  themselves  as 
absolutely  necessary  in  order  to  give  any  ra- 
tional standing  to  our  investigations,  and  they 
cannot  be  questioned  by  any  one  without 
immediate  and  obvious  absurdity.  If  any  one 
should  doubt  the  coexistence  of  persons  and 
assume  that  he  was  the  only  being  in  existence, 
^t  would  not  be  worth  while  to  argue  with 
him.  And  if  any  one  should  doubt  that  the 
laws  of  thought  are  essentially  the  same  for 
different  persons  he  could  not  rationally  pro- 
pose to  argue  with  any  one  else,  for  his  argu- 
ments could  only  show  what  was  reasonable 
for  himself,  and  this  by  hypothesis  need  not 
be  rational  for  any  others.  Again,  if  any  one 
questioned  the  world  of  common  experience, 
this  experienced  world  in  which  we  all  live 
and  meet  one  another  in  mutual  understanding 
and  to  which  we  have  to  adjust  ourselves  in  the 
direction  of  our  lives,  he  also  would  shut  him- 


22  PERSONALISM 

self  off  from  any  intelligible  communication 
with  others.  It  is  only,  then,  as  we  assume  and 
admit  these  general  postulates  that  our  dis- 
cussion could  have  any  rational  standing.  If, 
however,  any  one  chooses  to  deny  them  we 
have  no  objection.  We  only  insist  that  he 
shall  keep  the  peace  and  not  disturb  the  rest 
of  us  by  his  inconsistent  outcry. 

It  is  well,  however,  to  note  that  these  facts 
do  not  admit  of  being  speculatively  deduced 
or  demonstratively  established.  If  they  need 
demonstration  it  cannot  be  given.  They  in- 
volve some  very  deep  mysteries  and  carry  us 
into  the  depths  of  metaphysics,  the  philosophy 
of  the  infinite  and  its  relation  to  the  finite. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  they  do  not  need  de- 
monstration, being  so  cogently  forced  upon  us 
that  any  skepticism  regarding  them  can  never 
be  more  than  verbal.  In  dealing  with  them  of 
course  we  must  be  careful  not  to  find  more  in 
them  than  the  facts  themselves  necessitate,  or 
not  to  impart  into  them  a  system  of  crude 
metaphysics,  as  if  this  were  a  part  of  the  ori- 
ginal datum.   But  when  this  condition  is  duly 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    23 

regarded  the  facts  themselves  are  not  open  to 
question.  Every  system  of  whatever  kind  has 
to  beo'in  with  somethino;  behind  which  there 
is  no  SToinof  and  which  is  to  be  uncondition- 
ally  accepted.  In  our  human  thinking  we  must 
begin  by  admitting  the  points  in  question. 

It  is  also  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  we  have 
here  a  common  ground  for  all  intelligent 
thinkers,  whatever  their  philosophic  theories 
may  be.  Hume  and  Berkeley  and  Mill  would 
accept  these  postulates  as  readily  as  Reid  and 
Hamilton  and  the  most  dogmatic  of  realists  in 
'\^ general.  For  Hume  matter  was  substantially 
nothing  in  theory ;  for  Berkeley  it  was  an  idea 
only ;  for  Mill  it  was  a  "  permanent  possibility 
of  sensation,"  —  but  practically  matter  was 
the  same  to  them  as  to  every  one  else.  They 
had  to  adjust  themselves  to  material  things 
and  their  laws,  and  had  precisely  the  same 
kind  of  experience  as  their  realistic  neighbors. 
The  differences  among  the  philosophers  do 
not  concern  the  facts  of  experience  or  any- 
thing which  they  can  be  shown  to  imply  for 
possible    experience.    The    differences   begin 


24  PERSONALISM 

with  the  philosophic  interpretations.  The  facts 
are  interpreted  by  diiferent  schemes  of  meta- 
physics, or  perhaps  the  possibility  of  interpre- 
tation is  denied,  thus  producing  different  phi- 
losophies; but  the  facts  themselves  cannot  be 
practically  questioned  without  insanity,  or  even 
with  it.  Agnosticism,  idealism,  nihilism,  all 
leave  exjDerience  untouched,  and  for  experi- 
ence they  all  agree  with  common  sense.  There 
is  an  order  of  experience  which  we  do  not 
make  but  find,  with  which  we  have  to  reckon 
and  to  which  we  must  adjust  ourselves  in 
order  to  live  at  all.  In  this  conviction  of  com- 
mon sense  all  philosophers  agree,  whatever 
reasons  they  may  give  for  it. 

Thus  we  secure  an  intelligible  and  manage- 
able problem.  We  have  the  world  of  persons, 
the  laws  of  reason,  and  the  world  of  experi- 
ence, or  the  world  of  perception,  and  the 
world  of  life  and  history  for  our  data,  and 
the  just  claims  of  common  sense  are  recog- 
nized. Common  sense  has  always  claimed 
that  we  are  not  living  in  a  world  of  illusions, 
but  in  the  real  world,  and  this  we  not  only 


O- 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    25 

admit  but  affirm.  The  basal  facts,  therefore, 
for  philosophy  are  the  personal  world,  the 
common  reason,  and  the  world  of  experience. 
With  this  living,  aspiring,  hoping,  fearing, 
loving,  hating,  human  world,  with  its  life  and 
history  and  hopes  and  fears  and  struggles 
and  aspirations,  philosophy  must  begin.  We 
are  in  a  personal  world  from  the  start,  and 
all  our  objects  are  connected  with  this  world 
in  one  indivisible  system.  And  this  world  of 
experience  stands  absolutely  in  its  own  right, 
and  is  independent  of  our  metaphysical  the- 
ories concerning  it.  We  may  have  various 
theories  about  it,  but  the  experience  itself  is 
what  it  is,  and  its  contents  are  revealed  only 
in  life. 

This  personal  beginning  of  all  speculation 
should  be  emphasized,  as  oversight  of  the  fact 
has  led  to  some  of  the  great  aberrations  of 
philosophy.  In  particular  naturalism  begins 
with  matter  and  force  under  the  conditions 
of  space  and  time,  and  at  once  we  have  an  in- 
soluble dualism  in  our  theory,  and  also  a  strong 
tendency  toward  materialism  and  the  elimina- 


26  PERSON  ALISM 

tion  of  personality  altogether.  Such  errors  are 
avoided  when  we  recognize  the  primacy  of  the 
personal  world  from  the  start.  This  matter 
and  force  of  naturalism  are  a  pair  of  abstrac- 
tions broken  from  the  system  of  living  expe- 
rience, and  probably  having  only  an  abstract 
existence. 

Returning  now  to  experience,  and  confining 
our  attention  for  the  present  to  the  physical 
world,  we  point  out  first  that  we  speak  of  the 
system  of  experience  instead  of  the  world  of 
things,  as  that  is  a  phrase  which  carries  with 
it  many  questionable  metaphysical  impHca- 
tions.  The  order  of  experience  cannot  be  ques- 
tioned, but  when  we  import  into  it  the  notion 
of  material  and  impersonal  substances  under- 
lying it  we  have  already  transcended  experi- 
ence. Here  is  where  the  idealistic  systems 
break  off.  They  all  agree  on  the  data  of  ex- 
perience, its  laws,  and  the  practical  expecta- 
tions we  may  form  for  our  guidance,  but  they 
find  neither  proof  of  the  existence  of  these 
substances  nor  any  use  for  them,  supposing 
them  to  exist.   By  experience,  then,  we  mean 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    27         • 

the  world  of  objects,  so  far  as  they  can  be  the 
subjects  of  a  real  or  possible  experience,  and 
we  imply  nothing  beyond  this  by  way  of 
metaphysics.  How  the  order  of  experience  is 
possible  is  a  matter  for  later  inquiry. 

But  after  yielding  thus  far  to  the  scruples 
of  the  idealist,  we  must  next  point  out  in  the 
name  of  common  sense  that  this  world  of  ex- 
perience is  real  in  the  sense  of  being  trust- 
worthy, or  something  which  can  be  practically 
depended  upon.  It  is  not  illusion,  as  illusion 
;means  somethino^  which  does  not  fit  into  the 
ystem  of  common  experience  on  its  own  plane, 
and  is  therefore  a  fancy  or  phantom  of  the 
individual,  like  the  visions  of  a  fever  patient. 
But  all  that  we  find  or  can  find  in  the  order 
of  common  experience  is  to  be  unhesitatingly 
accepted  as  real,  and  for  the  very  good  reason 
that  there  is  no  help  for  it.  And  this  is  all  that 
common  sense  means  by  reality  in  general, — 
something  which  is  there  for  all  and  which 
can  be  depended  upon. 

But  these  terms,  real  and  unreal,  are  ex- 
ceedingly vague,  and  their  meaning  deserves 


28  PERSONALISM 

some  further  specification.    They  are  so  far 
from  having  a  single  meaning,  that  the  same 
things  may  be  called  real  and  unreal  at  the 
same  time,  according  to  our  standpoint.  Thus 
finite  things  may  be  called  real  on  their  own 
plane  of  finitude,  and  unreal  as  contrasted  with 
some  basal  and  absolute  existence.  But  there 
is  no  contradiction,  for  the  unreality  of  the 
finite  is  only  a  denial  of  its  eternal  self-exist- 
ence, and  this  gives  it  a  temporal  and  phenom- 
enal character  in  comparison  with  the  eternal. 
But  real  and  unreal  are  proper  contradictions 
only  when  applied  in  a  given  class  or  on  a  given 
plane.  Thus  unreal  appearance  in  space  is  such 
only  because  it  does  not  fit  into  our  general  sys- 
tem of  space  experience ;  but  when  it  does  thus 
fit  and  is  consistent  with  the  totality  of  space 
experience,  it  is  real  in  the  only  intelligible 
sense  of  the  word.  To  ask  whether  the  totality 
of  space  experience   is  real  or  illusory  is  to 
confuse  ourselves  by  mixing  two  realms.  The 
reality  of  space  experience  lies  in  its  validity 
for  experience.  It  is  possible  that  this  real  ex- 
perience might  be  looked  upon  as  only  phenom- 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    29 

enal  from  a  deeper  metaphysical  standpoint, 
but  that  would  in  no  way  modify  the  reality  of 
the  experience,  but  only  the  interpretations 
which  we  might  draw  from  it. 

As  matter  of  experience,  then,  experience 
is  real,  that  is,  valid  and  trustworthy,  and  not 
illusory.  This  point  is  to  be  emphasized,  as 
confusion  here  has  led  to  not  a  few  philo- 
sophical errors  and  some  religious  aberrations. 
Some  philosophers,  especially  in  the  Orient, 
deciding  that  only  the  self-existent  is  real,  pro- 
«eted  to  rule  out  all  finite  existence  and  exjDe- 
rience  as  illusion;  but  all  they  are  justified  in 
doing  is  to  say  that  finite  existence  and  expe- 
rience are  not  real  in  the  sense  of  absolute  and 
eternal  existence.  They  may  yet  be  entirely 
real  as  experiencing  subjects  and  experienced 
objects.  It  would  lead  to  a  great  clear- 
ing up  in  Oriental  thought  if  these  terms 
were  clearly  defined  and  consistently  applied. 
Considerable  maia  would  disappear  forthwith. 
In  like  manner  some  persons  among  our- 
selves have  thought  it  a  sufficient  proof  of  the 
unreality  of  pain  and  disease  to  call  them  un- 


30  PERSONALISM 

real,  that  is,  not  substantial.  In  tliis  sense,  of 
course,  they  are  unreal,  but  they  remain  very 
real  forms  of  experience  notwithstanding;  and 
in  dealing  with  them  as  forms  of  experience 
we  are  not  helped  in  any  way  by  our  meta- 
physics. Suppose  we  decide  that  hunger  and 
cold  are  illusions.  As  such  they  remain  just 
as  insistent  and  peremptory  as  before.  Hun- 
ger may  be  an  illusion  and  food  may  be  an  illu- 
sion and  cold  may  be  an  illusion,  but  the  only 
effective  way  of  dealing  with  the  illusions, 
hunger  and  cold,  is  to  apply  certain  other  illu- 
sions known  as  food  and  clothing  and  shelter 
and  warmth  and  so  on,  and  it  is  just  as  hard 
and  just  as  necessary  to  get  these  under  the 
name  of  illusion  as  under  any  other  name 
whatever.  Berkeley  did  not  find  his  butcher's 
bill  or  grocer's  bill  in  any  way  changed  by  his 
metaphysical  theory;  and  in  general  this  world 
of  experience,  real  or  possible,  is  not  modified 
by  our  metaphysical  notions  about  it.  Even  if 
we  go  to  the  extent  of  utter  nihilism,  life  itself 
ought  not  to  be  affected.  Thus,  if  we  call  our 
own  selves  illusions  and  our  life  an  illusion,  life 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    31 

remains  just  what  it  was  before,  and  inasmuch 
as  it  goes  on  fairly  well  now  as  illusion  there 
is  no  assignable  reason  why  it  might  not  con- 
tinue as  illusion  and  even  pass  into  better  and 
better  forms  of  illusion.  It  might  be  possible, 
therefore,  for  one  to  fall  back  upon  experience 
and  ignore  the  metaphysician  altogether,  with 
the  understanding'  that  life  itself  is  what  it  is 
and  that  it  is  not  modified  by  what  we  call  it. 

But  if  experience  be  thus  undeniable,  what 
need  of  philosophy  in  any  case,  or  what  func- 
tion does  philosophy  have?  It  might  almost 
seem  as  if  it  were  a  species  of  psychological 
vermiform  appendix,  without  any  remaining 
function,  and  only  a  seat  of  dangerous  in- 
flammations. 

In  reply  it  must  be  said  that  there  might 
well  be  beings  the  contents  of  whose  experi- 
ence should  be  perfectly  plain  and  open  to 
thought,  so  that  nothing  would  be  needed  but 
to  describe  and  register  those  contents  with 
their  laws.  We  find,  however,  in  our  own  case 
that  experience,  while  fundamental  and  also 


32  PERSONALISM 

true  on  its  own  plane,  is  not  necessarily  final. 
Our  experience  is  such  that  when  we  reflect 
upon  it  we  find  ourselves  unable  to  rest  in  it 
and  are  compelled  by  the  necessities  of  thought 
to  go  beyond  it,  not  for  its  reality  or  trust- 
worthiness, nor  for  its  truth,  but  for  its  ex- 
planation and  understanding.  For  instance, 
the  visible  heavens  are  something  whose  truth 
is  not  to  be  questioned;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  when  we  compare  the  phenomena  of  the 
visible  heavens  we  find  that  we  cannot  rest 
in  them,  but  must  go  beyond  them  to  the 
astronomic  heavens  as  their  only  adequate 
explanation.  We  find  here  the  true  relation  of 
experience  and  its  interpretation.  Experience 
itgelf  must  be  accepted  as  unconditionally 
trustworthy.  If  it  is  not  so  we  have  nothing 
on  which  to  build.  Here  is  the  dilemma  of  all 
systems  of  traditional  phenomenalism.  They 
begin  by  denying  the  truth  of  experience,  and 
then  seek  from  the  untrue  experience  to 
deduce  something  which  is  to  be  called  true. 
In  that  case  we  are  seeking  to  infer  trustwor- 
thy conclusions  from  untrustworthy  premises, 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    33 

something  which  logic  will  not  permit.  The 
correct  order  is  to  recognize  the  truth  of  expe- 
rience, so  far  as  it  goes,  but  to  see  that  experi- 
ence may  need  interpretation,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  visible  and  astronomic  heavens  again. 

Brother  Jasper  made  considerable  merri- 
ment years  ago  by  insisting  that  the  sun 
moved,  for  he  said  he  had  seen  the  sun  on  one 
side  of  the  house  in  the  morning  and  on  the 
other  side  of  the  house  in  the  afternoon,  and 
as  the  house  had  not  moved  the  sun  had 
moved,  and  therefore  the  sun  does  move.  Now, 
in  BrothietJasper's  original  contention  he  had 
a  fact  which  astronomy  could  not  ignore  and 
one  which  astronomy  was  bound  to  explain, 
under  penalty  of  seeing  its  theory  condemned ; 
and  the  proof  of  the  astronomic  theory  rests 
on  the  fact  that  it  includes  not  only  Brother 
Jasper's  fact,  but  a  great  many  other  facts  of 
which  Jasper  had  no  knowledge;  but  Jasper 
was  right  as  to  his  fact.  He  only  failed  to  see 
that  his  fact  admitted,  and  indeed  demanded, 
another  explanation. 

Now  in   this  respect   Brother  Jasper  very 


34  PERSONALISM 

well  represents  the  position  of  common  sense 
respecting  experience.  It  is  rightly  persuaded 
that  experience  is  something  which  can  be 
depended  upon,  and  it  proceeds  to  explain  this 
fact  by  certain  assumptions  which  may  be 
doubted.  In  this  way  the  crude  metaphysics  of 
common  sense  is  produced,  at  which  critical 
philosophy  has  always  taken  offense.  Reflec- 
tion, however,  shows  that  this  experience, 
when  critically  studied,  does  not  allow  us  to 
rest  in  it  as  final,  but  requires  us  to  go  beyond 
it  for  its  ultimate  explanation.  If  we  bear  this 
in  mind  we  shall  see  that  it  is  possible  to  hold 
at  once  the  trustworthiness  of  experience  and 
also  the  necessity  of  transcending  it. 

We  may,  then,  speak  of  experience  as  true 
or  false  according  to  our  standpoint,  but  we 
must  be  very  careful  in  applying  these  terms 
lest  they  lead  us  into  error.  We  see  that  the 
untaught  rustic  in  some  sense  lives  continually 
in  a  world  of  illusion.  He  takes  the  visible 
heavens  as  final,  and  has  no  suspicion  of  the 
astronomical  heavens.  He  takes  his  experience 
of  material  things  also  as  final,  and  has  no 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    35 

suspicion  of  the  truths  which  physical  science 
reveals  concerning  them.  He  is  living,  then,  in 
continuous  gigantic  illusion,  in  this  sense,  that 
his  eyes  are  holden,  yet  not  in  the  sense  that 
his  experience  is  false.  His  experience  is  true 
so  far  as  it  goes,  but  his  interpretation  of  it 
is  mistaken.  Or  we  might  say  his  experience  is 
very  Hmited  and  hence  admits  of  an  interpreta- 
tion which  would  be  seen  to  be  inadequate  if 
the  experience  were  more  extensive.  The  whole 
cycle  of  scientific  truth  is  hidden  from  him, 
not  contradicting  anything  that  he  knows,  but, 
because  he  knows  so  httle,  lying  entirely  be- 
yond, his  horizon.  If,  however,  his  experience 
should  enlarge,  he  would  not  find  his  old 
truths  contradicted,  but  a  good  many  of  his 
old  limited  notions  would  disappear,  and  many 
other  notions  would  receive  proper  limitation. 
This  astronomical  illustration  is  not  intro- 
duced as  being  perfectly  parallel  to  the  meta- 
physical interpretations  of  philosophy,  but  it 
serves  to  show  at  least  how  experience  may  be 
at  once  true  and  not  self-sufficient,  requiring 
us  to  go  beyond  it  for  its  interpretation. 


36  PERSONALISM 

Returning  again  to  experience  we  discern 
that  it  has  certain  contents  and  ways  of  being 
and  happening,  and  this  leads  to  the  partition 
of  territory  between  science  and  philosophy. 
Things  hang  together  in  certain  ways,  and 
events  come  along  together  according  to  cer- 
tain rules.  These  uniformities  of  coexistence 
and  sequence  admit  of  being  studied  and 
described  and  registered  without  reference 
to  metaphysics.  Whatever  our  metaphysical 
scheme,  be  it  realistic  or  idealistic  or  agnostic 
or  nihilistic,  things  do  hang  together  in  expe- 
rience in  certain  ways.  In  the  outer  world  of 
perception,  in  the  inner  world  of  mind,  and 
in  the  social  world  of  history,  there  are  certain 
orders  of  likeness  and  difference,  of  coexist- 
ence and  sequence,  and  concomitant  variation 
among  the  facts  of  experience.  These  are  re- 
vealed only  in  experience,  and  whether  we  like 
them  or  not,  and  whether  we  can  make  any- 
thing out  of  them  or  not,  they  are  undeniably 
there.  If  there  be  any  question  as  to  the  order 
of  chemical  change,  we  make  the  experiment 
and  the  fact  is  established.  If  we  would  know 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    37 

the  arrangement  of  the  geological  strata,  we 
look  and  see.  Things  occur  and  happen  and 
hang  together  in  certain  ways,  and  all  the 
king's  oxen  and  all  the  king's  men  could  not 
alter  this  fact.  Some  ecclesiastical  authorities 
once  took  offense  at  the  doctrine  of  the  earth's 
motion  and  denounced  it  with  all  their  might; 
but  the  world  kept  right  on  moving  after  texts 
had  been  quoted  and  anathemas  had  been 
uttered  against  it. 

The  knowledge  of  these  uniformities  is  of 
the  utmost  practical  value  for  the  guidance  of 
our  lives.  When  we  have  learned  what  they 
are  *^e  can  find  our  way  from  point  to  point 
in  the  world  of  experience.  We  avail  ourselves 
of  our  knowledge  to  reach  desired  effects  by 
arranging  their  antecedents,  or  to  escape  un- 
desired  effects  by  removing  their  antecedents. 
Our  entire  control  of  the  inner  and  outer  world 
is  reached  in  this  way,  and  the  knowledge  thus 
reached  is  the  sum  of  practical  wisdom.  This 
knowledge,  as  said,  can  be  gained  only  by 
observation  and  experiment.  No  amount  of 
reflection  upon  ideas  will  enable  us  to  deduce 


38  PERSONALISM 

a  priori  any  of  these  facts.  In  this  work  also 
we  are  independent  of  metaphysics  except  in 
the  most  general  sense.  We  need  not  have  a 
theory  of  gravitation  to  discover  that  certain 
changes  can  be  formulated  in  the  law  of  the 
inverse  square.  We  need  not  have  a  theory  of 
electricity  or  magnetism  to  notice  that  a  cer- 
tain set  of  physical  changes  have  such  and 
such  laws.  Hydrogen  and  oxygen  may  be  in 
themselves  things  or  phenomena  or  nothings, 
yet  we  know  that  a  certain  measure  of  what 
we  call  oxygen  and  hydrogen  will  unite  to 
form  a  certain  amount  of  what  we  call  water. 
This  matter  may  be  highly  mysterious  in  its 
innermost  essence,  but  for  practical  purposes 
we  know  how  to  deal  with  it,  and  know  what 
will  happen  vmder  circumstances  open  to  ob- 
servation and  experiment.  And,  as  said,  this 
order  of  experience  remains  even  if  we  decide 
to  call  things  nothings,  for  the  hydrogen 
nothing  and  the  oxygen  nothing  would  still 
unite  to  form  the  water  nothing,  and  we  are 
as  well  off  as  ever,  no  better  and  no  worse,  for 
our  metaphysics.  This  knowledge  of  the  con- 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    39 

tents  and  laws  of  experience  is  originally  be- 
gun by  common  sense.  The  spontaneous  and 
unreflective  experience  of  humanity  has  got 
together  a  good  deal  of  information.  To  carry 
on  this  work  with  greater  precision  and  wider 
range  is  the  work  of  science.  Science  has  pro- 
perly no  principles  beyond  those  of  common 
sense  observation  and  trial.  It  only  applies 
those  principles  more  thoroughly  and  invents 
more  accurate  methods  of  observation  and  ex- 
periment, but  scientific  methods  move  along 
the  lilies  of  common  sense.  And  this  work  of 
science  is  full  of  beneficence,  and  every  intel- 
ligent person  should  wish  it  success.  No  one 
can  find  any  reason  for  objecting  to  it,  for 
every  one  must  recognize  in  it  one  of  the  most 
beneficent  forms  of  human  activity.  It  is  the 
great  source  of  our  mastery  over  nature,  and 
must  go  on  until  that  mastery  has  been  vastly 
extended,  leading  to  the  casting  out  of  old 
forms  of  disease,  the  better  guidance  of  life, 
the  putting  off  of  human  drudgery  upon  mus- 
cles of  steel,  and  the  subjection  of  what  we 
call  the  forces  of  nature  to  human  service  to 


40  PERSONALISM 

a  degree  hitherto  undreamed  of,  a  degree  of 
"which  our  present  control  of  nature  gives  only 
the  faintest  suggestion.  In  this  work  science 
has  inalienable  rights,  and  no  philosopher  or 
theologian  may  molest  or  make  it  afraid.  It  is 
in  this  work,  too,  that  science  does  invaluable 
service,  for  it  is  just  this  knowledge  of  the  way 
things  hang  together  in  an  order  of  law  that 
gives  us  our  control  of  nature  and  makes  civ- 
ilization possible.  We  cannot  overestimate  the 
importance  of  science  in  its  own  field. 

But  this  field  is  limited.  If  these  spatial 
and  temporal  facts  with  their  various  uniformi- 
ties were  all  known,  an  important  question 
would  remain  untouched.  This  is  the  question 
of  meaning  and  causal  interpretation,  and  this 
question  the  mind  insists  upon  asking.  After 
we  have  found  that  things  exist  and  hang  to- 
gether in  certain  ways  in  space  and  time,  we 
next  need  to  know  what  they  mean,  and  what 
the  cause  is  that  underlies  the  cosmic  pro- 
cesses. What  is  the  nature  of  the  causality, 
and  is  it  moving  toward  any  goal?  This 
question  belongs  to  philosophy.  Nothing  that 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    41 

science  does  or  can  do  even  tends  to  answer 
it.  Science  discovers,  describes,  registers  the 
facts ;  philosophy  interprets  them.  It  seeks  to 
penetrate  to  the  hidden  seat  of  the  power  that 
underlies  the  world  and  to  detect  the  secret 
meaninof  that  animates  it.  Both  the  scientific 
and  philosophic  inquiry  are  equally  necessary 
for  the  full  satisfaction  of  the  human  mind, 
but  their  codrdinate  rank  has  not  always 
been  recognized.  The  positivists  rule  out  the 
causal  inquiry  altogether.  They  hold  that  all 
we^i^n  do  is  to  register  the  orders  of  coexist- 
ence and  sequence  in  space  and  time.  All 
beyond  that  is  fruitless.  The  agnostics  come 
to  the  same  conclusion  by  a  somewhat  different 
road.  The  causal  inquiry  is  one  that  we  are 
bound  to  make,  but  one  that  we  can  never  an- 
swer. Practically,  then,  we  must  be  positivists, 
with,  however,  a  sense  of  the  omnipresent  mys- 
tery upon  which  all  things  depend  and  from 
which  they  proceed.  Common  sense  does  not 
distinguish  the  questions  at  all.  It  believes  in 
causality,  but  finds  it  in  sense  objects,  and 
there  is  no  mystery  about  them.    When  this 


42  PERSONALISM 

view  is  carried  out  it  gives  us  the  familiar  nat- 
uralism of  materialistic  and  atheistic  thought. 

But  a  more  critical  philosophy  declines  any 
of  these  views.  Time  has  judged  both  posi- 
tivism and  agnosticism,  and  the  human  mind 
has  rejected  them.  Common  sense  remains  on 
the  surface  and  has  no  suspicion  of  the  depths 
of  the  problem.  These  depths  critical  reflec- 
tion seeks  to  reveal  or  to  sound. 

But  here  the  objection  may  be  raised :  if  ex- 
perience is  to  be  unconditionally  accepted  there 
would  seem  to  be  little  need  for  any  puzzles 
over  the  causation  in  the  case,  for  things 
about  us  are  manifestly  causal,  and  so  what 
need  is  there  to  go  beyond  those  things,  simply 
describing  them  not  only  in  their  temporal 
and  spatial  relations  but  also  in  their  causal 
relations  ?  This  leads  to  the  insight  that  the 
question  of  causality  is  very  much  deeper  and 
more  mysterious  than  is  commonly  supposed. 
This  appears  from  the  study  of  physics  as  well 
as  from  abstract  metaphysical  reflection. 

A  first  thought,  of  course,  is  that  causality 
is  given  in  immediate  experience  of  things ;  but 


COMMON  SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    43 

since  the  time  of  Hume  this  notion  has  been 
obsolete  among  practiced  thinkers.  There  is  of 
course  no  question  that  causality  is  in  play  in 
the  production  of  physical  changes,  but  where 
the  causality  is  to  be  located  and  how  it  is  to 
be  conceived  is  a  problem  not  so  easily  man- 
aged. Common  sense  locates  it  in  the  things 
themselves,  but  as  new  facts  are  discovered 
and  reflection  upon  them  is  extended  this  is 
seen  to  be  an  impossible  view.  Thus,  take  this 
desk  at  which  I  stand.  It  is  easily  described 
in  tferms  of  experience,  and  in  such  terms  there 
is  no  mystery  about  it.  But  when  I  proceed 
to  ask  concerning  the  nature  of  the  material 
of  which  it  is  composed  I  soon  find  myself  be- 
ginning to  grope.  The  wood,  according  to  the 
physicists  and  chemists,  is  composed  of  mole- 
cules, which .  in  turn  are  built  of  atoms,  and 
nowadays  these  atoms  themselves  seem  to  be 
systems  of  particles  still  more  minute.  And 
when  inquiry  is  continued  we  are  told  of  still 
deeper  mysteries,  of  vortex  rings  in  an  ether, 
with  other  dark  sayings,  the  result  of  which 
is  to  show  that  the  things  about  us  are  not 


44  PERSONALISM 

substantial  things,  but  rather  processes  of  an 
energy  beyond  them ;  and  at  last  we  are  led,  in 
the  words  of  Mr.  Spencer,  to  recognize  "  the 
one  absolute  certainty  that  he  [man]  is  ever 
in  the  presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal 
Energy,  from  which  all  things  proceed."  How- 
ever true  this  conclusion  may  be,  the  facts 
adduced  serve  to  show  that  the  problem  of 
causation  has  deeper  mysteries  in  it  than  we 
at  first  suspected.  We  are  still  sure,  as  said, 
that  causation  is  in  play  as  the  ground  of  phy- 
sical changes,  but  we  seem  compelled  to  locate 
it,  not  in  the  phenomena  themselves,  but  in 
the  basal  energy  beyond  them  on  which  they 
depend  and  by  which  they  are  coordinated. 
This  inquiry  takes  us  into  the  depths  of  meta- 
physics. 

Thus  we  see  a  way  of  harmonizing  common 
sense,  science,  and  philosophy.  They  are  not 
mutually  contradictory  or  indifferent  realms, 
but  rather  mutually  supplementary  aspects  of 
the  mind's  effort  in  the  attempt  to  under- 
stand itself  and  its  experience.  All  conflicts 
between  them,  then,  are  entirely  the  outcome 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    45 

of  misunderstanding  and  ignorance.  Common 
sense  and  science  must  discover  the  facts,  their 
contents,  their  spatial  and  temporal  laws,  other- 
wise philosophy  has  nothing  to  work  upon  ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  after  science  has  done 
this  work,  the  higher  interpretation  remains 
necessary,  and  without  it  the  mind  cannot 
fully  satisfy  all  its  tendencies  and  come  to  rest. 
Each  inquiry  is  justified  and  highly  important 
in  its  own  field,  and  each  must  recognize  the 
coordinate  importance  of  the  other. 

Science,  we  have  said,  studies  the  laws  of 
coexistence  and  sequence  among  the  facts  of 
experience,  and  leaves  their  interpretation  to 
philosophy.  A  certain  extension  of  the  sci- 
entific field,  however,  must  be  made  in  this 
way.  Science  may  undertake  a  certain  kind 
of  interpretation  in  its  own  field  of  space 
and  time  without  going  into  the  metaphysical 
field  which  belongs  to  philosophy.  The  astro- 
nomical illustration,  which  we  have  already 
given,  serves  to  show  this.  The  astronomer 
need  not  go  beyond  his  own  spatial  phe- 
nomena and  the  laws  which  obtain  therein 


46  PERSONALISM 

in  order  to  reach  his  astronomical  conclu- 
sions. Proceeding  on  the  experience  of  the 
variation  of  the  apparent  size  of  bodies  ac- 
cording to  their  distance,  we  can  infer  from 
the  given  spatial  phenomena  how  they  would 
appear  from  another  point  of  view,  and  in 
this  way  we  may  pass  to  affirm  the  astro- 
nomical heavens  as  the  way  in  which  the 
system  would  look  if  we  extended  our  space 
vision.  If  the  visible  heavens  are  only  appa- 
rent we  can  argue  to  their  appearance  if  their 
distances  from  us  were  diminished.  Passing, 
then,  in  imagination,  back  and  forth  in  space, 
we  can  form  some  conception  of  the  great 
sidereal  system  and  its  mighty  spaces.  In 
so  doing  we  use  no  new  principle,  but  only 
apply  the  familiar  laws  of  space  and  space 
appearance. 

And  thus,  in  general,  we  find  that  phe- 
nomena interpreted  by  their  own  laws  give 
a  hint  of  past  conditions  and  also  point  to 
future  conditions.  From  a  given  state  of 
things  we  can  infer  the  past  state  of  things 
or  look  forward  to  a  future  state  of  things. 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    47 

in  accordance  "with  the  laws  observed  to  hold 
among;  them.  Thus  we  can  read  back  the 
geological  history  of  our  earth  to  some  ex- 
tent, and  also  its  biological  history,  or  its 
astronomical  history.  From  given  erosions 
and  strata,  and  from  a  succession  of  fossil 
forms  in  these  strata,  and  from  various  astro- 
nomical data,  we  can  do  somewhat  in  the 
way  of  reading  back  into  the  past  of  the  sys- 
tem. In-Nlike  manner,  from  the  present  con- 
ditions,  laws,  and  tendencies,  we  can  infer 
something  respecting  the  future.  But  in  all 
of  these  cases  the  inference  remains  within 
the  phenomenal  realm,  or  among  the  phe- 
nomena of  space  and  time,  and  they  involve 
no  new  metaphysical  principle  beyond  the 
simple  recognition  of  those  phenomena  and 
their  observed  laws.  In  this  sense,  then,  sci- 
ence not  merely  discovers  and  describes  and 
registers  the  facts  of  experience,  but  it  also 
infers  from  them  many  other  facts  as  existing 
elsewhere  in  space,  or  in  past  or  future  time. 
It  is  to  be  observed,  however,  that  this 
scientific  inference  is  hypothetical  and  can- 


48  PERSONALISM 

not  claim  to  have  the  certainty  of  the  facts 
of  experience  which  can  be  verified  in  expe- 
rience itself.  It  has  a  certain  measure  of 
probability  and  is  not  to  be  gratuitously  re- 
jected. But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  can  never 
lay  claim  to  be  assured  matter  of  fact,  as  it 
rests  upon  certain  assumptions  which  are  far 
from  being  necessary  truths.  This  inferred 
knowledge  of  the  past  assumes  that  we  know 
all  the  determining  circumstance^j^that  the 
order  of  change  is  constant,  and  that  no 
manifestation  of  a  new  force  from  without 
or  within  occurs ;  and  as  this  is  something 
we  never  can  know,  we  are  not  entitled  to  be 
dogmatic.  Of  course  the  reasoning  in  such 
cases  may  be  sound,  but  the  premises  may  be 
open  to  doubt.  For  example  :  If  a  certain 
valley  is  being  cut  away  at  a  fixed  rate,  we 
can  readily  calculate  how  long  it  has  taken  to 
form  it.  Or  if  the  delta  of  the  Mississippi  is 
extending  a  given  distance  every  year,  we 
can  by  simple  division  tell  how  long  it  has 
been  in  forming.  Or  if  a  certain  peat-bed 
has  a  given  thickness  and  has  been  deposited 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    49 

one  inch  a  year,  we  can  easily  tell  how  long 
the  deposition  has  taken.  In  such  cases,  as 
said,  the  reasoning  may  be  exact,  the  math- 
ematics perfect,  but  the  conclusion  depends 
upon  the  assumed  truth  of  the  premises.  It 
might  be  in  the  case  of  our  peat-bed  that  we 
should  find  at  the  bottom  of  the  bed,  say  a 
Roman  shoe,  or  coins  of  the  date  of  Augus- 
tus Csesar,  in  which  case,  if  our  mathematics 
had  given  us  a  million  or  two  of  years  as 
the  quotient,  we  should  know  that,  while  the 
mathematics  was  right,  the  inference  itself 
was  wrong. 

Again,  we  can  never  be  sure  that  there 
might  not  have  been  manifestations  of  unsus- 
pected forces,  bringing  about  new  conditions 
which  would  make  our  reasoning  invalid.  For 
instance,  if  there  were  a  number  of  beings  liv- 
ing in  a  world  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen,  they 
might  conceivably  learn  the  physics  of  gases 
very  thoroughly,  and  they  could  infer  that  the 
gases  would  contract  with  cold  or  expand  with 
heat,  but  they  would  not  have  any  hint  of 
what  would  happen  if  an  electric  spark  should 


60  PERSONALISM 

pass  through.  In  that  case  there  would  be  a 
sudden  manifestation  of  unsuspected  chemical 
properties,  resulting  in  very  different  physical 
and  chemical  properties  in  the  water  vapor 
which  would  result.  If  these  hypothetical 
beings  should  survive  the  process,  they  might 
then  proceed  to  study  the  physics  of  water 
vapor  and  become  dogmatic  again  as  to  what 
was  possible  on  the  basis  of  the  law  of  con- 
tinuity; and  their  reasons  would  be  valid  until 
the  vapor  cooled  below  a  certain  point,  when 
there  would  be  another  break  of  continuity ; 
and  the  result  would  be  water  with  another 
set  of  hitherto  unsuspected  properties.  And 
if  the  speculators  still  lived  and  should  once 
more  grow  dogmatic  about  continuity,  their 
conclusions  might  be  justified  until  the  water 
was  cooled  down  to  32  degrees  Fahrenheit, 
when  another  wonder  would  happen.  The 
water  would  pass  into  ice,  in  bold  defiance  of 
the  law  of  continuity,  and  still  a  new  set  of 
properties  would  appear.  This  serves  to  show 
that  we  must  be  somewhat  careful  not  to  be 
too  dogmatic  in  our  inferences  from  the  pre- 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    51 

sent  state  of  things,  for  what  we  have  illus- 
trated here  in  the  large  may  take  place  in  the 
small  all  the  time.  Indeed,  the  system  of  spa- 
tial changes  and  successions,  based  upon  purely 
kinematic  considerations  of  the  composition 
of  motions,  is  continually  suffering  modifica- 
tions from  the  dynamic  realm,  conceived  either 
as  the  nature  of  the  elements  or  as  some  en- 
ergy outside  of  them  and  working  upon  them. 
To  what  extent  this  is  possible  in  general  is 
of  course  unknown,  but  enough  is  known  to 
warn  us  ag^ainst  a  confident  doo-matism  based 
on  the  supposed  law  of  continuity.  Only  the 
self-confident  dogmatist  knows  that  the  system 
has  already  manifested  all  its  essential  poten- 
tialities. 

Logic  makes  the  further  suggestion  at  this 
point  to  the  effect  that  no  moving  system  can 
ever  give  an  account  of  its  origin ;  for  when  a 
system  of  law  is  given  it  is  logically  possible 
to  read  the  system  backwards,  but  the  back- 
ward reading  in  such  a  case  does  not  repre- 
sent any  actual  fact,  but  simply  what  would 
have  been  the  fact  if  the  system  had  existed 


62  PERSONALISM 

through  that  time.  Every  such  system,  then, 
has  what  may  be  called  a  virtual  past.  Thus, 
if  we  should  suppose  the  solar  system  created 
outright,  the  equations  which  express  the  com- 
positions and  motions  of  the  planets  at  the 
moment  of  creation  could  be  read  backward, 
but  the  backward  reading  would  refer  to  a 
virtual  past,  not  a  real  one.  The  same  is  true 
for  any  order  of  law  in  a  changing  world.  It 
admits  of  being  read  backward,  and  there  is 
no  sure  test  whereby  we  can  distinguish  the 
virtual  from  the  real  past.  Our  analytic 
thought  naturally  assumes  that  the  simple  ele- 
ments preceded  compounds ;  but  this  is  only  a 
logical  precedence,  and  we  find  no  warrant  for 
turning  it  into  a  temporal  relation.  If  there 
have  always  been  chemical  elements,  for  all 
we  can  say  they  may  always  have  been  chem- 
ically active  and  chemically  united  in  any 
order  of  complexity.  Dogmatizing  on  origins 
is  logically  a  very  perilous  business.  It  gener- 
ally ends  in  mistaking  the  simplifications  of 
analysis  for  the  original  forms  of  existence. 
Wisely,  then,  did  Mr.  Mill  say  even  of  the  so- 


COMMON   SENSE,  SCIENCE,  PHILOSOPHY    53 

called  laws  of  nature  that  we  should  confine 
our  affirmations  to  a  "  reasonable  degree  of 
extension  to  adjacent  cases." 

Science,  then,  has  the  world  of  temporal  and 
spatial  phenomena  for  its  field ;  but  it  is  ne- 
cessary to  remember  that  this  world  has  its 
roots  in  an  invisible  and  impicturable  world 
of  power  and  possibly  of  purpose,  and  the 
real  reason  for  all  spatial  and  temporal  mani- 
festation must  ultimately  be  sought  in  the 
world  of  power.  And  as  this  and  its  implica- 
tions are  very  largely  hidden  from  us,  we  need 
to  beware  of  all  dogmatism  respecting  either 
past  or  future  which  is  far  removed  from  our 
practical  interests. 

Our  first  step  toward  the  personal  inter- 
pretation of  experience  consists  in  the  insight 
that  we  are  in  a  personal  world  from  the  start, 
and  that  the  first,  last,  and  only  duty  of  philo- 
sophy is  to  interpret  this  world  of  personal  life 
and  relations.  Any  other  view  can  only  lead 
to  the  misleading  abstractions  and  aberrations 
with  which  the  history  of  thought  abounds. 


II 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

How  is  experience  possible  ?  This  is  the  ques- 
tion with  which  Kant  inaugurated  a  new  era 
in  philosophy.  Before  his  time  there  had  been 
two  views  respecting  the  origin  of  knowledge. 
One  was  that  all  knowledge  is  from  experience. 
Mind  is  purely  passive  in  knowing,  and  impres- 
sions are  made  upon  it  from  without.  The  fa- 
mous metaphor  of  the  tabula  rasa  has  served 
this  school  as  both  doctrine  and  argument  ever 
since  the  time  of  Plato.  Knowledge,  then,  is  a 
mere  reading  off  of  what  the  mind  passively 
receives.  The  other  view  was  that  the  mind 
may  know  many  things  independently  of  ex- 
perience. The  former  view  had  been  reduced 
to  absurdity  by  Hume,  and  the  latter  view 
had  run  into  a  barren  formalism  in  the  hands 
of  Leibnitz's  disciples.  Both  views  were  super- 
ficial. The  empirical  school  had  never  decided 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  55 

what  experience  means  when  the  mind  is  ut- 
terly passive,  and  they  had  fomid  it  easy  with 
Locke  to  deduce  many  rational  principles  from 
a  passively  received  experience.  But  Hume 
came  and  showed  that  such  an  experience  must 
become  a  vanishing  phantasmagoria,  which  per- 
ishes as  fast  as  it  is  born  and  leaves  nothing 
articulate  behind  it.  Since,  however,  we  do 
have  an  articulate  experience,  it  is  plain  that 
the  question  of  the  origin  of  knowledge  is  sub- 
ordinate to  the  deeper  question  respecting  the 
origin  of  experience  itself.  If  it  should  turn 
out  that  experience  is  a  product  of  our  rational 
nature,  the  folly  of  seeking  to  deduce  reason 
from  experience  would  be  manifest.  Hence  the 
epochal  significance  of  the  question,  How  is 
experience  possible? 

Kant's  answer  is  well  known.  Experience  is 
not  something  given  ready-made  from  without, 
but  is  actively  constructed  by  the  mind  within. 
Experience  is  possible  only  through  a  certain 
constitutive  mental  activity,  according  to  prin- 
ciples immanent  in  the  understanding.  In  this 
way  the  raw  material  of  sense  impressions, 


m  PERSONALISM 

which  in  themselves  are  fleeting  and  discontinu- 
ous, is  built  into  a  rational  world  of  experience. 
This  insight  was  Kant's  great  contribution  to 
philosophy,  and  it  remains,  in  spite  of  all 
criticism,  a  permanent  possession  of  reflective 
thought. 

This  result  finally  vacates  the  traditional  em- 
piricism which  views  the  mind  as  only  passively 
receptive  in  knowledge.  Hume  showed  the  in- 
articulate nihilism  to  which  the  doctrine  must 
come  when  made  consistent,  and  Kant  showed 
that  actual  experience  is  a  mental  product.  In 
this  result  he  had  been  forestalled  by  Hume, 
in  a  somewhat  left-handed  way,  in  his  admis- 
sion that  there  is  much  in  thought  which  cannot 
be  found  in  an  experience  of  the  passive  type, 
and  which  he  ascribed  therefore  to  a  "  mental 
propensity  to  feign."  When  carefully  studied, 
it  turns  out  that  this  "propensity  to  feign" 
is  a  very  active  faculty  in  Hume's  system.  Be- 
tween Hume  and  Kant  the  old  sense  empiri- 
cism is  deprived  of  all  visible  means  of  ra- 
tional support.  It  now  belongs  to  the  family 
of  superstitions. 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  57 

The  principles  of  knowing  are  primarily  im- 
manent laws  of  mental  activity.  This  we  must 
now  endeavor  to  bring  out  into  clear  vision,  as 
the  great  difficulty  in  popular  philosophizing 
and  all  the  strengfth  of  traditional  naturalism 
lie  in  the  apparent  immediacy  of  knowledge, 
so  that  it  seems  to  be  no  problem  at  all.  This 
makes  it  easy  to  believe  that  a  great  system  of 
things  can  exist  and  be  known  without  the 
activity  of  any  rational  and  spiritual  principle. 
This  assumption  is  the  corner-stone,  and  indeed 
the  whole  foundation,  of  all  mechanical  philo- 
sophizing. Hence  the  need  of  making  this 
activity  evident. 

Knowleds'e  of  course  cannot  be  defined  ex- 
cept  in  terms  of  itself,  neither  can  it  be  deduced 
from  that  which  is  not  knowledge.  There  must 
always  be  a  certain  unique  and  immediate  char- 
acter to  knowledge  which  can  rest  on  nothing 
but  itself.  In  some  sense,  then,  there  is  no  an- 
swer to  the  question.  How  is  knowledge  pos- 
sible? for  there  is  nothing  deeper  or  other 
than  knowledge  by  which  to  explain  it.  Still 
the  study  of  knowledge  may  reveal  certain  con- 


58  PERSONALISM 

ditions  and  implications  which  are  unsuspected 
by  unreflective  thought  and  which  have  pro- 
found significance  for  philosophical  theory. 
This  fact  gives  us  our  next  subject  of  inquiry. 
We  do  not  aim  to  tell  how  knowledge  is  pos- 
sible, in  the  sense  of  giving  a  recipe  by  which 
it  might  be  compounded  from  that  which  is 
not  knowledge,  but  in  the  sense  of  studying 
the  conditions  and  implications  of  the  knWmg 
process.  And,  first  of  all,  we  must  make  clear 
the  problem  and  our  starting-point. 

A  fundamental  distinction  in  knowing  is  that 
between  the  "  me  "  and  the  "  not-me."  I  place 
all  other  things  or  persons  as  my  objects  in 
changeless  antithesis  to  myself  as  conscious 
subject.  But  inasmuch  as  this  "not-me"  in- 
cludes my  fellow  men,  the  "  me  "  is  soon  enlarged 
by  their  addition,  and  then  the  antithesis  be- 
comes the  "  us  "  and  the  "  not-us."  We  human 
beings  become  the  "  us,"  the  subjects,  and  the 
cosmic  order  with  whatever  else  there  may  be 
becomes  the  "not-us."  Then  the  "not-us" 
breaks  up  again  into  the  cosmic  order,  so  far  as 
it  is  an  object  of  scientific  study,  and  its  cause. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  59 

If  we  could  attain  to  clear  and  definite  know- 
ledge on  all  of  these  points,  we  should  have 
made  great  progress  in  philosophy. 

It  will  very  likely  be  objected  by  some  that 
we  have  made  too  sharp  an  antithesis  between 
the  "me  "  and  the  "not-me,"  the  "  us  "  and 
the  "  not-us."  This  objection  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  many  persons  have  contracted  the  habit 
of  talking  about  monism  without  any  very  clear 
conception  of  their  own  meaning,  and  still  less 
of  its  concrete  possibility.  Whatever  monism 
can  do  for  us,  it  can  never  confound  us  with  one 
another  so  as  to  identify  Jesus  and  Judas,  or 
make  Mr.  Spencer's  critics  the  authors  of  his 
philosophy.  Whatever  universal  elements  the 
fact  of  knowledge  may  contain  or  imply,  as  a 
concrete  process  knowing  is  necessariljnndivid- 
ual,  a  gathering  by  the  "  me"  of  information 
respecting  the  "  not-me" ;  and  any  other  method 
of  treatment  will  result  in  confounding  all  dis- 
tinctions and  telling  us,  perhaps,  that  the  sub- 
ject of  the  universal  experience  is  the  same  as 
the  subject  of  the  particular  experience  —  a 


60  PERSONALISM 

dark  saying,  to  which  unfortunately  no  key  has 
been  furnished,  not  even  for  teachers. 

In  addition,  we  must  note  that  our  knowing 
in  its  very  nature  implies  being  in  the  sense 
of  a  content  which  is  the  object  of  the  know- 
ing. Knowing  as  an  act  never  ends  in  itself 
as  a  psychological  fact.  It  always  relates  itself 
to  a  content  which  the  knowinof  act  does  not 
make  but  reproduces.  There  is,  then,  in  th^  , 
very  idea  of  our  knowing  a  presupposition  of 
something  existing  apart  from  the  knowing 
as  a  mental  event,  and  this,  indeed,  is  the  very 
essence  of  the  idea.  This  fact  has  always  been 
overlooked  by  empiricists,  who  have  thought 
the  only  problem  of  knowledge  was  to  group 
particular  sensations  in  the  individual  con- 
sciousness, and  when  this  has  been  done  to 
their  own  satisfaction  they  have  supposed  that 
the  problem  of  knowledge  was  solved.  In  fact, 
however,  they  have  not  even  seen  the  problem, 
to  say  nothing  of  solving  it.  If  their  associa- 
tional  mechanism  worked  perfectly,  it  would 
only  give  sensations  associated  in  some  par- 
ticular consciousness,  and  could   never  give 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  61 

anything  beyond  it.  Solipsism  would  be  the 
only  result.  This  outcome  is  escaped  by  the 
ambiguity  of  the  term  sensation,  which  means 
primarily  an  unqualified  and  particular  impres- 
sion in  the  individual  sensibility,  and  which 
then,  without  warning,  is  transformed  into  a 
symbol  or  revelation  o£  a  world  of  things  exist- 
ing beyond  itself.  But  this  is  something  very 
different.  If  the  sensations  are  only  affections 
of  the  sensibility,  they  never  carry  us  beyond 
themselves;  but  if  they  point  to  and  reveal  a 
world  beyond  them,  we  have  something  more 
than  sensationalism.  All  the  apparent  success 
of  sensationalism  rests  upon  this  ambiguity, 
as  Green  has  shown  with  such  thoroughness 
in  his  Introduction  to  Hume. 

Assuming,  then,  this  world  of  things  other 
than  myself,  in  the  sense  that  they  cannot  be 
identified  with  myself,  we  have  the  question. 
How  is  a  knowledge  of  such  things  possible? 

Knowledge  is  conditioned  both  by  the  na- 
ture of  the  subject  and  by  the  nature  of  the 
object.  In  order  that  a  thing  may  be  known, 
the  subject  must  act  in  certain  ways  and  the 


62  PERSONALISM 

object  must  be  of  a  certain  nature.  If  the  sub- 
ject remained  passive  and  inert,  there  would 
be  no  knowledge;  and  if  the  object  were  such 
as  to  admit  of  no  rational  construction,  again 
there  could  be  no  knowledge.  We  consider  the 
activity  of  the  subject  first.  How  is  know- 
ledge possible  as  a  subjective  apprehension  of 
objects  other  than  the  knowing  subject? 

The  general  answer  to  this  question  is  that 
our  human  knowing  of  other  than  purely  sub- 
jective states  must  depend  upon  some  form  of 
interaction  between  the  "me"  and  the  "not- 
me."  This  "not-me,"  so  far  as  yet  appears, 
might  conceivably  be  the  world  of  things  about 
us,  or  it  might  be  an  all-embracing  impersonal 
energy,  or  it  might  be  a  supreme  spirit  upon 
whom  we  all  depend.  Common  sense,  of 
course,  assumes  that  the  interaction  is  between 
apparent  objects  and  ourselves,  for  there  seems 
to  be  nothing  else  in  sight.  This  view,  how- 
ever, loses  its  plausibility  as  soon  as  we  come 
to  see  the  phenomenality  of  the  world  of  ob- 
jects. Then  we  find  ourselves  shut  up  to  one 
or  the  other  of  two  views ;  but  for  our  present 


n 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  63 

purposes  it  makes  no  difference  what  view  we 
take  of  the  "  not-me."  Whatever  it  be  it  can- 
not give  us  ready-made  knowledge,  or  do  any- 
thing; but  furnish  a  stimuhis  to  our  own  mental 
activity.  In  all  interaction  between  things  the 
reaction  is  but  an  expression  of  the  agent's  own 
nature,  for  the  manifestation  of  which  other 
thing's  but  furnish  the  occasion.  Hence  the 
mental  reaction  which  we  call  knowledge  can 
be  looked  upon  only  as  an  expression  of  our 
mental  nature  according  to  principles  immanent 
in  itself.  But  this  statement  is  too  abstract  for 
easy  understanding  by  the  unpracticed  reader, 
and  we  must  attempt  a  more  concrete  explana- 
tion. 

Common  sense  begins  by  taking  knowledge 
for  granted.  In  the  beginnings  of  mental  de- 
velopment knowledge  is  not  even  a  problem. 
Things  are  there,  and  are  reflected  by  the  mind 
as  a  matter  of  course.  Of  the  complex  and 
obscure  processes  and  postulates  of  cognition, 
spontaneous  thought  has  no  suspicion,  and 
knowledge  woidd  have  always  been  taken  as 
a  matter  of  course  had  not  experience  revealed 


64  PERSONALISM 

difficulties  and  contradictions  in  our  thinking. 
Men  stumbled  at  an  early  date  upon  these 
difficulties  and  skepticism  was  awakened,  and 
thus  thought  was  gradually  forced  to  consider 
its  own  methods  and  to  inquire  into  the  pos- 
sibility of  knowledge  itself;  but  the  problem 
did  not  receive  its  full  and  adequate  statement 
until  the  time  of  Kant.  From  his  time  epl§>-^ 
temology  has  been  a  leading  department  of  phi- 
losophy. Common  sense  supposes  that  know- 
ledge arises  without  any  process  of  mystery, 
but  epistemology  shows  that  the  matter  is  ex- 
ceedingly complex.  The  existence  of  things 
is  by  no  means  the  same  as  our  knowledge 
of  them,  and  reflection  makes  plain  that  if 
things  existed  precisely  as  they  appear  to  us 
the  knowledge  of  them  could  arise  only  as  the 
mind  by  its  own  action  reproduces  the  con- 
tents of  things  for  thought.  Knowledge  is 
nothing  which  can  be  imported  ready-made 
into  a  passive  mind,  but  the  mind  must  actively 
construct  knowledge  for  itself.  We  see  this 
most  readily  in  the  case  of  conversation  or  any 
form  of  mutual  understanding  between  per- 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  65 

sons.  In  sueli  cases  no  ideas  pass  from  one  mind 
into  another,  but  each  mind  for  itself  con- 
structs the  other's  thought,  and  thus  appre- 
hends and  comprehends  it.  This  is  self-evi- 
dently  the  case  in  all  personal  communion,  and 
every  one  would  see  the  absurdity  of  any  other 
supposition.  Thoughts  are  not  things  to  be 
exchanged  or  handed  along.  They  exist  only 
through  thinking,  and  to  perceive  another's 
thougfht  is  to  think  it  for  ourselves.  But  this 
equally  expresses  the  fact  in  all  knowing.  To 
know  things  is  to  think  them,  that  is,  to  form 
thoughts  which  truly  grasp  the  contents  or 
meanings  of  the  things.  The  things  do  not 
pass  ready-made  into  the  mind.  Indeed  they 
do  not  pass  into  the  mind  at  all,  but  upon  oc- 
casion of  certain  action  upon  the  mind  the 
mind  unfolds  within  itself  the  vision  and  know- 
ledge of  the  world.  And  this  it  does,  accord, 
ing  to  the  physiologist's  report,  without  pat- 
tern or  copy,  and  in  consequence  of  certain 
nervous  changes  of  which  moreover  it  knows 
nothing  directly  and  commonly  knows  nothing 
whatever.  This  being  the  case,  it  is  manifestly 


66  PERSONALISM 

idle  to  think  of  knowledge  as  impressed  on  a 
passive  mind,  or  as  carried  ready-made  into 
the  mind.  The  knowledge  originates  within, 
and  the  laws  and  forms  of  knowledge  must 
primarily  be  the  laws  and  forms  of  thought 
itself.  Just  as  little  as  ideas  pass  from  the 
teacher's  mind  into  the  pupil's  mind,  just'as 
little  do  they  pass  from  things  without  into 
the  knowino;  mind. 

This  matter  is  plain  enough  upon  reflection, 
but  common  sense  has  its  difficulties.  We  ven- 
ture therefore  another  illustration.  Suppose  a 
man  who  had  lived  all  his  life  in  a  telegraph 
office  and  who  had  to  get  all  his  information 
respecting  the  existence  and  nature  of  an  ex- 
ternal world  by  the  clicks  of  the  instrument. 
»The  clicks  are  like  nothing  but  themselves. 
They  resemble  neither  the  things  they  are 
supposed  to  represent,  nor  the  thoughts  they 
are  supposed  to  evoke.  But  if  under  such  cir- 
cumstances the  man  did  read  them  back  into 
the  external  world,  it  is  manifest  that  he  must 
have  the  key  in  himself,  as  only  thus  could 
he  pass  from  clicks   to  meanings.    But  this 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  67 

illustration  hardly  even  adumbrates  the  ob- 
scurity and  difficulty  of  the  actual  process  of 
perception.  The  sense  clicks  left  to  themselves 
mean  nothing ;  it  is  only  as  they  are  made  the 
bearers  of  a  rational  content  that  they  acquire 
any  significance.  Sensations  at  best  in  their 
perceptive  relation  are  only  symbols,  the 
meaning  must  be  furnished  by  the  percipient 
mind. 

This  conclusion  must  stand  even  on  the 
supposition  that  we  simply  apprehend  or  read 
things  in  sense  perception  without  modifica- 
tion. But  most  of  our  objective  knowing  is 
not  perception,  but  interpretation.  The  world 
as  it  is  for  sense  is  very  difi^erent  from  the 
world  as  it  is  for  thought.  In  looking  at  a 
picture  the  colored  surfaces  and  outlines  are 
in  the  sense.  The  meaning^  is  in  thoug'ht.  In 
reading  a  book  the  printed  page  is  in  the 
sense.  The  sio^nification  is  in  thouoht,  and 
only  in  thought.  One  who  does  not  know  how 
to  read  would  look  in  vain  for  meaning  in  a 
book,  and  in  vain  would  he  seek  to  help  his 
failure  by  using  eye-glasses.  The  same  is  true 


68  PERSONALISM 

also  for  our  knowledge  of  the  world.  That 
which  is  in  sense  is  very  different  from  that 
which  is  in  thought.  The  sense  world  is  flit- 
ting, fleeting,  discontinuous.  Epistemology 
shows  that  it  is  all  an  inarticulate,  phantasma- 
goric flux  or  dissolving  view  until  thought 
brings  into  it  its  rational  principles  and^^fixes 
and  interprets  it.  The  sense  world,  so  far  as 
it  is  articulate,  is  already  a  thought  world.  Its 
permanences  and  identities  are  products  of 
thought.  The  complex  system  of  relations 
whereby  it  is  defined  and  articulated  is  a 
thought  product,  which  can  in  no  way  be  given 
to  sense.  The  far-reaching  inferences  of  sci- 
ence whereby  our  spontaneous  thought  of  the 
world  is  so  profoundly  transformed,  are  some- 
thing which  exist  for  neither  eye  nor  ear,  but 
for  thought  only.  The  world  of  science  differs 
from  the  world  of  sense  as  widely  as  the  con- 
ceptions of  the  astronomer  differ  from  the 
algebraic  signs  by  Avhich  he  expresses  them. 

At  first  glance  this  is  a  hard  saying  for  the 
plain  man  of  common  sense.  He  is  perfectly 
sure  that  the  things  he  sees  are  really  there, 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  69 

and  there  as  he  sees  them,  and  he  is  not 
aware  of  any  of  these  processes  of  which  we 
speak.  But  the  question  now  is,  not  whether 
the  things  be  there,  but  how  they  come  to  be 
there  for  us ;  and  when  this  distinction  is  made 
even  the  "  plain  man "  can  be  made  to  see 
that  there  are  more  things  in  this  matter  than 
have  been  dreamed  of  in  his  philosophy.  By 
common  consent  the  last  term  on  the  physical 
side  of  the  perceptive  process  is  some  form  of 
nervous  change,  and  this  is  but  a  fleeting 
impression  with  nothing  abiding  about  it. 
When  these  facts  are  remembered  it  becomes 
plain  that  a  permanent  and  rational  world  can 
be  reached  from  these  antecedents  only  as  the 
mind  reacts  upon  them  and  by  laws  imma- 
nent in  itself  proceeds  to  build  up  the  rational 
order  of  experience.  The  flitting  and  discon- 
tinuous impression  is  interpreted  into  a  con- 
tinuous and  abiding  world  only  by  a  perma- 
nent self  with  its  outfit  of  rational  principles ; 
and  if  this  were  taken  away  there  would  be 
only  an  inarticulate  flux  of  impressions  with- 
out rational  contents. 


70  PERSONALISM 

Some  further  illustration  may  be  useful 
in  illuminating  this  matter.  The  work  of 
thought  is  so  quick  and  subtle  that  it  is  easy 
to  overlook  it  altogether  and  to  take  the 
products  of  thought  as  original  data  antece- 
dent to  thouofht.  Thus  it  seems  self-evident 
that  sensation,  at  least,  is  something  which 
may  be  given  without  any  rational  activity. 
But  this  is  true  only  for  the  fleeting  temporal 
impression,  and  not  for  the  sensation  as  any- 
thing rationally  articulate.  But  the  temporal 
impression  itself  is  nothing  for  intellect  until 
it  is  fixed  into  an  abidinof  meaning;.  As  oc- 
curring,  the  impression  is  dispersed  through 
the  divisibility  of  time  into  an  indefinite 
number  of  parts  each  of  which  is  external  to 
every  other  and  different  from  every  other. 
But  thought  cannot  grasp  any  such  elusive 
thing  as  this  unless  it  be  able  to  fix  this  van- 
ishing flow  into  a  single  and  permanent  mean- 
ing, and  only  thus  does  the  impression  become 
anything  for  thought.  Similarly  with  regard 
to  recurrence  of  sensations,  this  is  impossible 
as  a  psychological  and   temporal  fact.    Past 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  71 

sensations  can  recur  as  little  as  past  time  can 
recur.  Recurrence  is  possible  only  as  the  mind 
fixes  its  experience  into  abiding  meanings 
and  identifies  those  meanings  in  successive 
phases  of  the  sense  flow ;  and  apart  from  this 
synthesis  and  identification  by  the  mind,  the 
sense  flow  would  have  neither  fixity  nor  per- 
manence nor  recurrence  of  any  kind.  The 
same  is  true  for  the  discontinuity  of  our  sen- 
sations and  the  continuity  of  the  world  of 
thinofs.  The  sensations  are  discontinuous,  and 
if  they  were  all,  there  would  be  equal  discon- 
tinuity in  things ;  but  the  mind  interprets  the 
discontinuous  sensations  into  a  world  of  con- 
tinuous things  on  its  own  rational  warrant, 
and  apart  from  this  interpretation  there  would 
be  no  framework  nor  systematic  connection 
at  all  in  the  world  of  experience.  Thus  it 
is  manifest  that  without  this  synthetic  and 
interpretative  action  of  the  mind  there  could 
be  no  world  whatever  for  us. 

And  now  to  complete  the  paradox,  it  must 
be  said  that  no  one  can  ever  perceive  any  world 
but  the  one  he  makes.  I  can  perceive  another's 


72  PERSONALISM 

thought  only  on  condition  that  I  think  that 
thought ;  and  the  thought  so  far  as  I  think  it 
can  never  be  other  than  mine.  I  may  have  the 
sure  conviction  in  connecti^n^with  it  that  it 
reproduces  the  content  of  another's  thought, 
but  it  can  exist  for  me  only  as  it  becomes  my 
own  thought,  the  product  of  my  own  think- 
ing. In  the  same  way  and  with  equal  evidence 
the  world  I  perceive  is  the  world  I  construct. 
When  we  are  looking  at  a  series  of  moving 
pictures  we  see  a  great  many  things  that  are 
not  there.  The  train  rolls  up  to  the  station. 
Passengers  leave  or  enter  the  cars.  The  plat- 
form is  thronged  with  persons  hurrying  to 
and  fro.  Yet  this  busy  scene  is  all  in  the 
beholder's  mind.  The  things  he  sees  are  the 
things  he  constructs.  And  the  same  is  true 
in  all  perception.  These  "constructs  "  are  all 
any  one  can  possibly  have  in  consciousness, 
though  it  may  be  that  they  all  carry  with  them 
a  reference  to  existence  beyond  the  percipient 
consciousness.  This  reference  constitutes  their 
objectivity,  and  makes  them  possible  objects 
for  others  also ;  nevertheless  the  "  construct  " 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  73 

itself,  with  of  course  this  objective  reference, 
is  the  only  possible  content  of  the  percipient 
consciousness,  and  this  "  construct "  must 
always  be  the  mind's  own  product.  And  be 
the  object  what  it  may,  we  never  can  come 
any  nearer  to  it  than  this  "  construct  "  will 
bring-  us. 

These  considerations  show  how  exceedingly 
complicated  the  perceptive  process  is  upon 
analysis,  and  how  utterly  mistaken  those  per- 
sons are  who  speak  of  an  immediate  knowledge 
of  reality  as  if  it  involved  no  process  what- 
ever. But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  infer  any 
doctrine  of  idealism  from  these  facts.  They 
belong  to  the  process  of  perception,  but  this 
process  itself  never  decides  as  to  the  reality  of 
the  object  perceived.  Reflection  shows  that 
in  any  case  perception  must  arise  in  this  way, 
that  is,  through  a  reaction  of  the  mind  against 
action  upon  it  so  as  to  build  up  or  construct 
the  world  for  itself.  It  is  not  merely  and  only 
a  construction  by  the  mind,  it  is  a  construction 
which  carries  with  it  a  reference  to  the  con- 
tent existing  apart  from  the  perceptive  act. 


74  PERSONALISM 

All  thinking  has  this  objective  reference.  It 
claims  not  to  produce  but  to  reproduce  a 
content  existing  ap^it  from  the  knowing  act 
itself.  Furthermore,  if  we  should  pass  to  an 
idealistic  affirmation  on  the  strength  of  this 
reasoning  the  immediate  consequence  would 
be  solipsism,  for  it  is  just  as  true  of  the  neigh- 
bors as  o£  things,  that  our  knowledge  of  them 
is  a  mental  construction.  Primarily  our  thoughts 
of  our  neig-hbors  arise  within  our  own  minds 
as  a  mental  interpretation  of  our  sense  experi- 
ence, and  if  we  are  to  deny  any  kind  of  an 
existence  to  things  on  account  of  the  process, 
we  must  equally  deny  the  neighbors  for  the 
same  reason.  Any  tenable  idealism,  therefore, 
must  rest  not  upon  the  process  of  perception, 
but  upon  an  analysis  of  the  product  of  per- 
ception. That  is,  we  must  examine  our  objects 
with  the  aim  of  seeing  which  of  them,  or  how 
much  of  them,  is  to  be  viewed  as  having 
proper  existence  and  how  much  of  them  has 
only  phenomenal  existence,  that  is,  existence 
for  intelligence.  To  illustrate:  the  world  of 
sense  qualities  is  found  to  have  only  phenom- 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  75 

enal  existence,  not  because  of  the  process  of 
perception,  but  because  a  study  of  them  shows 
that  they  have  no  meaning  apart  from  intel- 
lect with  its  function  of  sensibility. 

Thus  far  we  have  spoken  of  knowledge  as 
conditioned  only  by  the  nature  and  activity 
of  the  subject.  But  it  is  manifest  that  the 
nature  of  the  object  is  also  a  determining 
factor.  We  have  spoken  of  the  mind  as  im- 
posing its  laws  and  forms  upon  experience  and 
thus  reaching  objects ;  but  it  is  manifest  that 
this  is  only  part  of  the  matter.  For  unless 
the  objects  themselves  were  harmonious  with 
these  laws  and  forms,  the  latter  could  not 
be  imposed  upon  them.  It  is  manifest  that  I 
can  understand  another  person's  speech  only 
as  I  think  his  thought  for  myself,  but  it  is 
equally  manifest  that  I  cannot  understand  his 
thought  unless  there  be  some  thought  to 
understand.  Or,  again,  in  the  interpretation 
of  an  inscription  which  I  might  discover,  I 
can  interpret  it  only  as  I  have  the  key  in  my- 
self, and  it  is  equally  evident  that  interpre- 
tation   presupposes   that  the  inscription  has 


76  PERSONALISM 

rational  meaning.  It  would  be  hopeless  to  at- 
tempt to  understand  random  scratches.  The 
same  is  true  in  the  interpretation  of  the  sense 
signs  by  which  we  reach  the  knowledge  of 
nature.  The  mind  must  have  the  key  in  it- 
self, but  there  must  also  be  an  objective  order 
and  fixed  meaning  as  the  presupposition  of 
interpretation.  Otherwise  we  should  be  (^ek- 
ing to  understand  mere  noises  or  random 
scratches,  which  would  be  absurd.  When  this 
thought  is  carried  out  it  implies  an  objective 
rational  order  parallel  to  our  subjective  think- 
ing. As  speech  implies  a  mind  at  both  ends 
of  the  process,  so  knowledge  under  our  hu- 
man conditions  equally  implies  a  mind  at  both 
ends.  Noise  becomes  speech  only  as  thought 
is  expressed  in  it,  and  understood  through  it. 
So  the  affections  of  sense  become  knowledge 
only  as  they  are  the  media  for  expressing  and 
transmitting  thought  beyond  them. 

And  here  it  might  occur  to  some  uncon- 
vinced empiricist  to  return  to  his  claim  that 
the  sensations  are  all.  For,  after  all,  he  might 
ask,  what  is  there  in  experience  but  the  sense 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  77 

content,  actual  or  possible,  and  what  is  there 
that  cannot  be  expressed  in  terms  o£  sensa- 
tion, real  or  expected,  or  conceived  as  possible  ? 
How  can  motion  be  expressed  except  in  terms 
of  changing  sensations,  and  how  can  dis- 
tance and  size  be  figured  except  in  sensational 
terms  ? 

Such  questions,  if  seriously  asked,  would 
show  loyalty  and  determination  rather  than  in- 
sight into  the  problem.  They  would  not  touch 
the  question  respecting  the  form  of  experience 
at  all ;  and  this  is  one  of  the  matters  at  issue 
between  empiricism  and  apriorism.  The  spatial 
and  temporal  form,  and  the  relations  of  iden- 
tity, substantiality,  and  causality  are  not  in  the 
sense  experience  at  all  as  a  mere  affection  of 
the  sensibility.  Bearing  this  fact  in  mind,  the 
questions  only  imply  a  certain  phenomenalistic 
doctrine  of  sense  objects.  Applied  to  persons 
they  lead  straight  to  solipsism ;  for  other  per- 
sons could  be  reduced  to  groups  of  my  sensa- 
tions, real  or  possible,  in  the  same  way  and  with 
the  same  right.  Finally,  as  applied  to  sense 
objects,  they  reach  no  "  common  to  all,"  which 


78  PERSONALISM 

is  the  presupposition  of  a  mutually  intelligible 
experience.  Mr.  Mill,  working  along  this  line, 
defined  matter  as  a  "  permanent  possibility  of 
sensation,"  but  left  us  in  very  great  uncer- 
tainty as  to  its  whereabouts.  If  it  were  per- 
manent in  time  and  space,  it  would  be  very 
like  a  reality  instead  of  a  mere  possibility.  If 
it  be  said  to  exist  only  in  consciousness  we 
are  embarrassed,  remembering  that  there  are 
many  consciousnesses,  and  we  need  to  know  in 
which  one  it  has  its  seat,  and  also  how  there 
can  be  any  common  system  of  experience  at 
all  on  this  view.  This  difficulty  recurs  in  all 
phenomenal  systems,  and  there  is  no  removing 
it  until  we  plant  behind  the  phenomenal  sys- 
tem, sensational  or  otherwise,  a  Supreme  In- 
telligence which  manifests  his  thought  through 
it  and  thus  founds  that  objective  unity  of  the 
system  of  experience  which  is  presupposed  in 
all  our  knowing. 

But  this  doctrine  of  knowledge  as  taking 
place  through  our  own  "  constructs "  can 
hardly  fail  to  raise  the  question  as  to  the  valid- 
ity of  knowledge.  May  not  these  "  constructs  " 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  79 

be  really  only  shadows  of  our  own  minds, 
rather  than   true  apprehensions   of   reality? 

Looked  at  abstractly  this  possibility  cannot 
be  denied,  but  the  question  itself  is  by  no 
means  without  confusion.  It  speaks  of  a  true 
apprehension  of  reality  as  if  this  were  a  per- 
fectly clear  notion,  which  is  by  no  means  the 
case.  We  must  remember  that  experience  it- 
self, with  ourselves  as  having  it,  is  the  only 
sure  reahty  in  the  case ;  and  to  ask  whether 
this  be  a  true  apprehension  of  reality  is  not 
self-evident  in  its  meaning.  Surely,  before  we 
seek  to  know  any  other  reality  than  this  we 
should  show  that  such  reality  exists. 

But  whatever  reality  there  may  be,  it  is 
plain,  as  said,  that  our  knowledge  of  it  must 
arise  in  this  way ;  and  it  is  equally  plain  that 
our  knowledge  of  anything  in  the  heavens 
above  or  the  earth  beneath  must  consist  in 
seeing  how  we  must  think  about  it.  Our 
thought  cannot  become  the  thing,  neither  can 
the  thing  pass  bodily  into  our  thought.  We 
can  only  think  about  the  thing  and  see  if  we 
reach  any  result  which  satisfies  our  reason  and 


80  PERSONALISM 

fits  into  the  system  of  experience  so  as  to  har- 
monize with  it.  In  that  case  we  have  the  only 
positive  proof  possible  of  the  validity  of  know- 
ledge. 

Now  the  first  fact  that  meets  us  here  is  the 
validity  of  our  personal  knc^^vledge,  or  our 
mutual  understanding-  of  one  another.  If  we 
should  attempt  to  justify  this  knowledge  by 
any  insight  into  the  process  we  possess  we 
should  never  succeed.  But  the  knowledge  ver- 
ifies itself.  In  spite  of  the  obscurity  of  the 
process  and  the  impossibility  of  any  demon- 
stration that  this  process  must  result  in  valid 
knowledge,  we  contrive  to  be  quite  sure  of  one 
another's  existence  and  of  our  mutual  under- 
standing. We  find  the  same  thing  extending 
also  into  the  field  of  experience,  and  this  shows 
that  our  conceptions  are  valid  there  also. 
Whatever  mystery  attaches  to  the  process  of 
knowledge  and  whatever  verbal  doubts  may 
be  raised  about  it,  the  knowledge  vindicates 
itself  within  its  own  sphere  by  the  clearness 
of  our  apprehension  and  by  its  consistency  in 
experience.  But  this  discharges  the  skeptical 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  81 

doubt  for  all  practical  purposes  by  showing 
that  it  has  no  foundation  in  our  personal  life 
and  experience,  and  is  therefore  only  an  ab- 
stract doubt  without  any  concrete  grounds. 
Any  further  question  that  may  arise  must  deal 
with  the  contents  of  experience  itself.  It  may 
be  that  reflection  on  these  contents  would  lead 
to  many  modifications  of  popular  notions  in 
order  to  make  our  spontaneous  thought  con- 
sistent with  itself ;  but  there  would  be  no 
scepticism  in  such  a  result.  But  this  doubt  has 
played  such  a  role  in  modern  philosophy  that 
we  must  consider  it. 

The  distinction  of  appearance  and  reality 
in  common  use  is  a  familiar  one  and  occasions 
no  embarrassment  of  any  sort,  as  it  lies  entirely 
within  the  sphere  of  sense  experience.  Thus, 
a  straight  stick  looks  bent  when  one  end  is 
thrust  into  the  water.  A  large  thing  looks  very 
small  at  a  great  distance.  The  mountains  look 
blue  when  seen  through  a  haze,  and  distance 
lends  many  an  enchantment.  When  a  house 
is  seen  from  afar  it  has  a  certain  appearance, 
which  varies  constantly  as  we  approach  it.  In 


82  PERSONALISM 

all  these  cases  common  sense  distinguishes  the 
appearance  from  the  reality,  hut  proceeds  to 
rectify  the  appearance  hy  referring  it  to  the 
report  of  other  senses  or  by  comparing  it  with 
our  total  experience  of  the  object.  The  reality 
of  a  house  is  not  the  visual  presentation,  but 
it  is  a  building  of  a  certain  size  which  we  would 
come  to  if  we  moved  in  a  certain  direction. 
The  reality  of  the  bent  stick  is  the  stick  as  it 
appears  when  drawn  from  the  water  and  han- 
dled and  measured,  etc.  In  such  cases,  then, 
reality  and  appearance  are  contrasted,  but  the 
contrast  carries  with  it  no  doubt  or  difficulty, 
at  least  for  common  sense.  It  would  of  course 
be  very  embarrassing  for  a  theory  of  pure 
sensationalism,  as  in  that  doctrine  a  varying 
sensation  would  mean  a  different  object. 

But  out  of  the  Kantian  theory  of  know- 
ledge a  series  of  difficulties  emerged  which 
,  tended  to  confirm  agnosticism  respecting  real 
things  and  to  limit  us  simply  to  a  knowledge 
of  appearances  or  phenomena.  This  doctrine 
we  now  have  to  consider.  It  has  played  a  great 
role  in  all  philosophy  since  Kant's  time  and 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  83 

is  very  far  from  being  entirely  clear  in  its 
meaning  as  well  as  sound  in  its  foundations. 

Kant's  general  claim  was  that  the  laws  of 
thought  or  categories  of  the  understanding, 
as  he  called  them,  are  valid  only  for  phe- 
nomena and  are  not  valid  for  thino-s  in  them- 
selves.  He  said  their  only  function  consists  in 
giving  form  to  our  sensations,  and  that  apart 
from  these  sensations  they  are  entirely  empty. 
Now,  the  sensations  themselves  are  simply 
affections  of  sense  which  have  nothinof  corre- 
sponding  to  them  apart  from  the  mind.  In 
that  case,  being  subjective  in  their  nature,  no 
possible  arrangement  of  them  can  make  them 
other  than  subjective.  The  categories  are 
merely  principles  of  arrangement  of  this  sub- 
jective material,  and  by  consequence  the  ap- 
parent knowledge,  or  the  seeming  knowledge, 
is  only  a  knowledge  of  appearances  or  phe- 
nomena, and  cannot  claim  to  have  existence 
beyond  the  range  of  human  experience. 

This  is  Kant's  famous  doctrine  of  relativity, 
and  it  is  by  no  means  clear  even  in  its  mean- 
ing and  still  less  satisfactory  in  its  logic.    We 


84  PERSONALISM 

shall  find  that  Kant  is  here  under  the  influence 
of  sundry  untenable  notions. 

In  clearing  up  the  doctrine  it  is  plain  first 
of  all  that  Ka^t  has  failed  to  consider  the 
position  in  his  doctrine  of  the  plurality  of  per- 
sons, which  he  everywhere  assumes.  As  we 
have  before  pointed  out,  any  doctrine  of  per- 
ception which  rests  upon  an  analysis  of  the  pro- 
cess only  must  end  in  solipsism.  Hence  if  we 
make  the  world  of  things  subjective  presenta- 
tions because  the  knowledge  of  them  arises 
through  our  mental  construction,  we  must  do 
the  same  thing  with  the  world  of  persons,  for 
the  knowledge  of  them  has  an  equally  subjec- 
tive character.  Kant  passes  from  "  me  "  to 
"us"  without  telling  us  how  he  makes  the 
transition.  He  really  begins  with  "  us,"  —  not 
merely  with  the  individual  self,  but  with  the 
whole  collection  of  individual  human  beings, 
—  and  gets  an  experience  valid  for  us  all  in 
exceedingly  obscure  ways.  But  what  Kant  did 
not  do  the  critic  must  do,  and  we  must  inquire 
into  the  relation  of  these  many  minds  to  one 
another  in  a  system  of  phenomenal  knowledge. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  85 

To  begin  with,  it  is  not  clear  in  what  sense 
other  minds  can  be  called  phenomenal  to  me. 
Phenomena  are  appearances,  and  only  in  an 
accommodated  sense  can  minds  be  said  to  ap- 
pear at  all.  If,  however,  we  make  other  minds 
phenomenal  on  the  strength  of  our  theory  of 
knowledge,  it  would  really  seem  that  personal 
communion  vanishes  altogether.  For  we  can 
know  these  other  minds  only  through  our 
thought  of  them,  and  that  thought  is  said  to 
give  us  merely  appearances,  which,  moreover, 
do  not  appear.  Thus  all  contents  of  other  con- 
sciousness vanish  entirely  from  our  knowledge. 
But  Kant  never  considered  this  application  of 
his  theory  and  had  no  doubt  whatever  of  the 
possibility  of  mutual  understanding  in  as  in- 
timate a  sense  as  any  one  would  care  to  affirm. 

But  Kant  affirms  the  phenomenality  of 
knowledge  not  so  much  of  other  minds  as  he 
does  of  "  the  mind,"  or  "  the  Ego."  Even  our 
own  minds  are  phenomena,  or  our  knowledge 
of  ourselves  is  phenomenal  only.  This  Kant 
tries  to  make  out  by  showing  that  we  have  no 
proper  knowledge  of  the  transcendental  or 


86  PERSONALISM 

ontological  self,  but  only  of  the  empirical  self. 
Much  of  this  is  a  deduction  from  his  own  the- 
ory of  knowledge,  rather  than  a  demonstration 
on  the  basis  of  experience.  The  transcenden- 
tal ego,  in  distinction  from  the  living,  con- 
scious, active  self  of  experience,  is  a  fiction, 
like  all  the  other  "noumena,"  and  is  as  base- 
less and  worthless  as  they.  Kant  finds  various 
"  paralogisms  "  in  rational  psychology,  none 
of  which,  however,  makes  out  his  case.  The 
rational  psychologists  of  Kant's  time  had  laid 
claim  to  a  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  the  soul 
which  they  really  did  not  possess.  For  the  dis- 
proof of  this  knowledge  no  doctrine  of  phe- 
nomenalism is  needed,  but  solely  a  criticism  of 
the  arguments  offered.  This  part  of  Kant's 
work  was  well  done.  But  his  general  disproof 
of  all  real  knowledor'e  of  the  thinkino-  self  did 
not  satisfy  Kant  himself  apparently,  as  we 
find  from  the  modifications  made  in  the  second 
edition  of  the  "  Critique."  He  omits  a  large  part 
of  the  argumentation  of  the  first  edition  in  the 
second  and  says,  "  It  would  be  a  great,  nay, 
even   the  only,  objection   to  our  Critique  if 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  87 

there  was  a  possibility  of  proving  apriori  that 
all  thinking  beings  are  by  themselves  thinking 
substances  ;  that  as  such  (as  a  consequence  of 
the  same  argument)  personality  is  inseparable 
from  them  and  that  they  are  conscious  of  their 
existence  as  distinct  from  all  matter,  for  we 
should  then  have  made  a  step  beyond  the  world 
of  sense  and  entered  into  the  field  of  noumena, 
and  after  that  no  one  could  dare  to  question 
our  right  of  advancing  further,  of  settling  in 
it,  and  as  each  of  us  is  favored  by  luck,  taking 
possession  of  it.  .  .  .  Hence  synthetical  pro- 
positions apriori  would  be  not  only  admissible, 
as  we  maintain  in  reference  to  objects  of  pos- 
sible experience,  but  would  be  extended  to 
things  in  general  and  to  things  by  themselves, 
a  result  which  would  put  an  end  to  the  whole 
of  our  Critique  and  bids  us  leave  everything 
as  we  found  it."  Here  it  seems  pretty  clear 
that  Kant  would  have  liked  to  admit  a  real 
knowledge  of  the  self,  but  he  fears  that  to 
admit  it  would  undermine  the  whole  of  the 
Critique,  and  of  course  that  could  not  be  per- 
mitted. Hence  he  allows  himself  some  exceed- 


88  PERSONALISM 

ingly  doubtful  reasoning  in  support  of  his  re- 
jection of  the  knowledge  of  a  noumenal  self. 
But  on  the  other  hand  what  a  phenomenal 
self  would  be  which  in  turn  had  other  pheno- 
mena appearing  to  it  is  something  left  alto- 
gether undecided  by  him.  The  fact  is  we  have 
here  a  very  distinct  contradiction.  A  phenom- 
enon which  is  not  an  appearance  to  somebody 
is  a  logical  impossibility.  It  is  possible  to  look 
upon  things  as  phenomenal  only ;  but  to  look 
upon  the  self  which  views  these  phenomena  as 
itself  phenomenal  in  the  same  sense  is  alto- 
gether impossible.  Where  there  is  no  perceiv- 
ing subject  there  can  be  no  phenomena  ;  and 
when  we  put  the  subject  among  the  phenomena, 
the  doctrine  itself  disappears.  So,  then,  Kant's 
doctrine  of  phenomenalism  with  regard  to  the 
self  must  be  withdrawn.  Of  course  many  ques- 
tions may  be  asked  respecting  the  self  which 
we  are  not  able  to  answer,  but  the  self  itself  as 
the  subject  of  the  mental  life  and  knowing  and 
experiencing  itself  as  living,  and  as  one  and  the 
same  throughout  its  changing  experiences,  is 
the  surest  item  of  knowledge  we  possess. 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  89 

The  Kantian  doubt,  then,  must  be  Kmited  to 
the  world  of  external  things  ;  and  here,  too,  its 
meaning  and  application  are  by  no  means  ob- 
vious. It  is  clear  in  the  first  place  that  any 
doctrine  of  phenomenalism  which  affirms  a 
series  of  unknowable  noumena  behind  phenom- 
ena is  in  unstable  equilibrium.  For  phenomena 
are  the  immediate  fact,  and  if  they  do  not  medi- 
ate for  us  any  valid  knowledge  of  noumena, 
the  latter  are  philosophically  worthless  and  logi- 
cally unaffirmable.  For  we  must  never  forget 
that  experience  itself,  with  ourselves  as  its  sub- 
jects, is  the  primary  fact ;  and  anything  which 
we  affirm  beyond  this  fact  must  be  for  its  ex- 
planation. This  makes  it  strictly  impossible  to 
affirm  anything  to  which  no  laws  and  forms  of 
thought  apply.  If,  then,  the  categories  apply 
only  to  phenomena  the  noumena  disappear 
altogether.  For  these  forms  include  space  and 
time,  unity  and  plurality,  cause  and  effect, 
substance  and  attribute,  reality  and  negation, 
and  so  forth.  Hence  the  thing  in  itself  is  in 
neither  space  nor  time,  is  neither  one  nor  many, 
neither  cause  nor  effect,  neither  substance  nor 


90  PERSONALISM 

attribute,  neither  real  nor  unreal.  Manifestly 
such  a  thing  is  nothing,  either  in  thought  or 
existence. 

To  this  result  any  doctrine  which  denies  the 
application  of  the  categories  of  thought  to  re- 
ality must  certainly  come.  The  thing  in  itself, 
or  things  in  themselves,  must  be  brought 
within  the  range  of  thought  or  must  go  out 
of  existence.  As  soon  as  we  remember  that 
these  things  are  affirmed  solely  for  the  sake  of 
making  experience  intelligible  to  us,  the  emp- 
tiness of  this  kind  of  agnosticism  immediately 
appears.  Accordingly  the  agnostic  soon  finds 
himself  compelled  to  apply  some  of  the  cate- 
gories of  thought  to  his  unknowable  reality. 
The  most  naive  illustrations  of  this  fact  ap- 
pear in  Mr.  Spencer's  manipulation  of  his 
Unknowable.  When  he  is  dealing  with  reli- 
gion and  theology  he  will  hear  of  no  affirma- 
tion whatever  respecting  the  Unknowable,  but 
when  he  has  once  imposed  upon  them  the  in- 
junction of  perpetual  silence,  he  soon  begins 
to  know  a  great  deal  about  the  Unknowable. 
It  forthwith  appears  as  one  and  eternal  and 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  91 

causal,  and  moreover  we  are  told  that  the  like- 
nesses and  changes  among  things  point  to  like- 
nesses and  changes  in  the  fundamental  reality 
itself,  so  that  from  the  former  we  can  get  a  great 
deal  of  information  respecting  the  latter.  This 
led  to  Mr.  Mill's  remark  that  in  this  way  we  seem 
able  to  get  a  "  prodigious  amount  of  knowledge 
respecting  the  Unknowable."  Contradictions 
of  this  kind  are  necessary  in  the  nature  of  the 
case.  The  thing  which  is  invoked  to  explain 
the  world  of  life  and  experience  must  neces- 
sarily stand  in  causal  relations  to  it  and  admit, 
to  some  extent,  of  being  known  thereby. 

Returning  now  to  the  Kantian  view,  it  is 
plain  that  it  mainly  rests  on  a  naive  assump- 
tion of  uncritical  thought.  For  common  sense 
all  things  except  our  individual  ideas  are  ex- 
tra-mental. They  exist  apart  from  our  con- 
sciousness and  are  supposed,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  to  exist  apart  from  all  consciousness. 
This  gives  us  a  world  of  things  in  themselves. 
When  next  epistemology  shows  that  we  can 
grasp  these  things  only  through  the  thoughts 
we  form  of  them,  and  further  points  out  the 


92  PERSONALISM 

exceedingly  complex  and  obscure  nature  of  the 
processes  of  knowledge,  we  then  seem  to  have 
all  the  conditions  for  a  doctrine  of  agnosticism. 
The  mind  is  now  clearly  limited  to  the  thought 
sphere,  and  things  exist  beyond  that  sphere ; 
hence,  manifestly,  we  can  know  only  phe- 
nomena and  can  never  reach  things  in  them- 
selves. Here  the  assumption  is  that  things  are 
first  and  undeniable  in  their  extra-mentality, 
and  then  thought  is  challenged  to  know  them, 
which  it  is  manifest  thought  can  never  do 
under  these  conditions. 

But  the  true  way  out  is  to  show  that  no 
such  problem  as  is  here  proposed  exists.  By 
extra-mental  existence  common  sense  really 
means  to  deny  individual  illusion,  and  if  it 
could  secure  this  common  sense  would  be  sat- 
isfied. But  a  truly  extra-mental  existence,  in 
the  sense  of  something  beyond  thought  and 
independent  of  it  and  in  no  way  amenable  to 
it,  is  an  impossible  conception.  If  we  assume 
that  the  world  of  thing's  oris^inated  in  thouo-ht 
and  expressed  thought  they  would  be  homo- 
geneous with  thought,  and  there  would  be  no 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  93 

apriori  reason  why  we  should  not  know  them. 
This  theistic  suggestion  brings  the  world  of 
things  within  the  thought  sphere  and  assimi- 
lates the  problem  of  knowledge  to  that  of 
mutual  understanding  among  persons.  In  that 
case  things  are  indeed  independent  of  our 
thinking  for  their  existence,  but  they  are  not 
independent  of  all  thinking.  They  lie  within 
the  thought  sphere,  and  that  impassable  gulf 
between  the  thought  world  and  thing  world, 
into  which  the  agnostic  tumbles,  does  not  exist. 
This  theistic  suggestion  Kant  nowhere  recog- 
nizes in  his  epistemology,  although  it  mani- 
festly puts  an  entirely  different  aspect  upon 
the  question.  It  makes  the  thought  sphere 
all-embracing,  but  within  that  sphere  it  dis- 
tinofuishes  between  the  finite  knower  and  the 
world  of  things,  thus  leaving  the  antithesis 
between  them  as  it  exists  for  common  sense. 
At  the  same  time  by  making  the  world  of 
things  the  expression  of  thought,  it  leaves 
them  open  to  our  apprehension  and  under- 
standing. This  is  the  result  to  which  idealism 
is  fast  leading  us.  And  when  we  combine  this 


94  PERSONALISM 

theistic  suggestion  with  the  fact  already  men- 
tioned, that  nothing  whatever  can  be  affirmed 
which  does  not  stand  in  articulate  rational 
relation  to  the  world  of  experience,  we  see 
how  empty  any  doctrine  of  absolute  agnos- 
ticism must  be. 

Indeed,  this  whole  doctrine  of  phenom- 
enalism must  be  revised  to  bring  it  into 
accord  with  the  demands  of  thought.  By 
phenomena,  if  the  term  is  to  be  anything 
more  than  another  word  for  fact,  we  must 
understand  those  things  which  exist  only  in 
and  for  intelligence.  They  are  not  phantoms 
or  illusions,  nor  are  they  masks  of  a  back- 
lying  reality  which  is  trying  to  peer  through 
them ;  they  are  simply  what  they  purport  to 
be  in  experience.  At  the  same  time  they  have 
no  extra-mental  existence,  although  they  may 
well  have  an  extra-human  existence.  The 
world  of  sense  qualities  illustrates  the  con- 
ception. These  have  no  existence  in  space 
apart  from  intelligence.  They  are  really  only 
effects  in  the  sensibility,  and  would  disappear 
if  the  sensibility  were  away.    If  the  ideahty 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  95 

of  space  and  time  be  allowed,  then  all  that 
appears  in  space  and  time,  the  whole  physi- 
cal world  in  short,  is  only  phenomenal.  At 
the  same  time  it  is  to  be  noted  that  these 
phenomena  are  not  illusions,  but  have  their 
special  type  of  reality.  They  have  the  reality 
of  being  forms  and  factors  of  our  experience, 
and  our  knowledge  of  them  and  practical 
dealing  with  them  make  up  the  great  bulk 
of  life.  Noumena,  on  the  other  hand,  or 
things  in  themselves,  are  to  be  ruled  out 
altogether  as  myths.  The  antithesis  of  phe- 
nomena and  noumena  rests  on  the  fancy  that 
there  is  something  behind  phenomena  which 
we  ought  to  perceive  but  cannot,  because  the 
masking  phenomenon  thrusts  itself  between 
the  reality  and  us.  Phenomena,  however,  are 
not  the  masks  of  anything,  but  so  far  as  cog- 
nition goes  they  are  what  they  seem  to  be. 
They  are  effects  of  something,  which  may 
possibly  be  known  through  th^m,  and  in  no 
other  sense  are  they  to  be  spoken  of  as 
masks,  or  even  as  manifestations  of  a  hidden 
reality.  The  only  intelligible  and  permissible 


96  PERSONALISM 

question  concerns  not  their  nature  but  their 
causality.  What  is  the  power  at  work  which 
produces  the  phenomenal  order?  This  is  an 
intelligible  question,  and  the  only  permissible 
one  at  this  point. 

When  this  question  is  raised  we  see  at  once 
that  it  can  never  be  solved  in  picture  terms. 
Metaphysics  shows  that  true  substantial  exist- 
ence can  only  be  conceived  under  the  causal 
form.  For  the  explanation  of  the  world  we 
need  an  agent,  not  a  substance.  With  this 
insight  all  thought  of  describing  the  agent  in 
static  or  picture  terms  vanishes.  Causes  are 
revealed  in  their  deeds  only.  They  do  not 
look,  they  act.  Thus  the  question  of  know- 
ledge becomes  this :  Can  we  know  anything 
of  the  invisible  power  behind  the  phenomenal 
system,  or  rather  which  produces  the  phe- 
nomenal system  ?  Of  course  we  can  know 
nothing  in  picture  form,  but  can  we  know 
anything  in  any  way  ?  Something  indeed 
we  must  know,  or  the  thought  vanishes 
altogether;  but  it  may  be  that  we  can  only 
form  such  general  notions  as  that  it  must 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  97 

be  causal  and  unitary  and  permanent,  and 
for  the  rest  must  content  ourselves  with  de- 
scribing the  orders  of  coexistence  and  se- 
quence among  the  products  of  its  activity. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  possible  that  a 
study  of  these  products  should  reveal  pur- 
pose, plan,  and  character  in  this  unpicturable 
power.  Only  a  study  of  the  facts  can  decide 
this  point ;  but  if  such  a  knowledge  of  this 
power  be  possible,  we  have  all  we  care  to 
know.  And  if  it  should  prove  impossible,  it 
would  be  because  of  the  ambiguous  indica- 
tions of  the  facts,  and  not  because  the  real 
things  in  themselves  are  hidden  by  masking 
phenomena. 

Thus  we  set  aside  the  Kantian  agnosticism, 
or  at  least  the  agnosticism  based  upon  Kant's 
system.  At  the  same  time  we  point  out  that 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  value  even  in  Kant's 
relativity  of  knowledge.  A  thorough-going 
limitation  of  the  catesrories  to  our  human  sub- 
jectivity  ends,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  denial 
of  independent  objectivity  altogether.  At  the 
same  time  there  is  a  large  element  of  such 


98  PERSONALISM 

subjectivity  in  our  thinking.  The  practical  ap- 
plication of  the  categories  is  largely  formal 
only  and  relative  to  our  intellectual  conven- 
ience. The  unities  and  identities  and  substan- 
tialities which  appear  in  our  human  thought 
and  speech  are  mostly  our  own  products.  They 
result  from  the  application  of  the  categories 
of  thousfht  to  the  fluent  and  unsubstantial 
manifold  of  sense,  and  have  only  relative  val- 
idity. Thus  the  unities  we  find  in  experience 
are  mainly  formal.  This  is  the  case  with  all 
spatial  and  temporal  unities;  for  these  can 
have  only  conceptual  existence.  Reality,  or 
substantiality,  also,  is  largely  formal  and  rel- 
ative in  its  application.  Most  of  our  substan- 
tive conceptions  present  no  real  thinghood,  but 
only  processes  or  phenomena  or  activities  to 
which  the  mind  has  given  a  substantive  form, 
but  which  are  never  to  be  mistaken  for  things. 
Light,  heat,  electricity,  magnetism,  and  a  great 
multitude  of  abstract  nouns  are  illustrations. 
Identity,  too,  is  more  often  formal  than  real. 
We  find  very  few  real  identities  in  experience, 
where  certainly  most  things  are  in  perpetual 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  99 

change  and  flow.  In  all  such  cases  the  identity 
is  formal,  imposed  by  the  mind  for  its  own 
convenience  and  expressing  no  ontological 
fact.  Our  classifications  also  are  largely  rela- 
tive, not  representing  any  eternal  ideas  or  ver- 
itable cosmic  groupings,  but  solely  conven- 
iences and  points  of  view  of  our  own.  They 
are  relative  to  our  sensibility  or  to  our  pur- 
poses, and  can  lay  no  claim  to  be  looked  upon 
as  any  abiding  part  of  the  cosmic  furniture. 
They  are  what  Herbart  would  call  ''accidental 
views."  In  calling  attention  to  this  fact,  thus 
shutting  off  the  hasty  dogmatism  of  the  pre- 
Kantian  period,  Kant  has  done  a  great  service 
of  lasting  value.  Hereafter  we  have  to  proceed, 
not  dogmatically  but  critically,  in  seeking  to 
eliminate  the  purely  relative  and  accidental 
point  of  view. 

There  is  another  limitation  of  knowledge 
springing  out  of  phenomenalism  which  is  of 
great  value.  This  is  the  claim  that  the  cate- 
gories of  thought  have  no  application  apart 
from  ^he  objects  of  a  real  or  possible  expe- 
rience.    This  does  not  imply  any  things  in 


100  PERSONALISM 

themselves  to  which  the  categories  may  not 
be  appHed,  but  only  that  experience,  real  or 
possible,  is  the  field  of  their  fruitful  applica- 
tion. This  is  perfectly  valid  when  by  experi- 
ence we  mean  the  whole  of  experience,  not 
merely  the  sense  experience  of  the  outer  world 
but  also  the  inner  experience  of  the  conscious 
self.  With  this  understanding  the  doctrine  is 
this.  The  categories  in  themselves  are  simply 
forms  of  mental  arrangement  and  merely 
prescribe  the  form  in  which  experience  is  to 
be  ordered  when  it  is  given.  In  this  respect 
they  are  like  the  rules  of  grammar,  which 
prescribe  how  we  shall  speak  if  we  speak  at 
all,  but  which  in  themselves  have  no  concrete 
contents.  Living  speech,  then,  is  not  merely 
grammar,  but  definite  meanings  expressed 
accordinof  to  orrammatical  rules,  and  when  there 
is  no  specific  meaning  the  grammar  itself  moves 
in  a  vacuum.  All  experience,  according  to 
Kant,  is  real  only  through  some  given  fact, 
and  apart  from  such  facts  is  empty.  Thus  we 
might  talk  of  sensations  of  a  class  we  have 
never  experienced,  as  the  sensations  of  a  tenth 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  101 

sense ;  but  it  is  plain  that  such  talk,  however 
learned  it  might  be,  would  be  formal  and 
empty,  as  there  would  be  no  concrete  sensa- 
tion to  give  significance  or  substance  to  our 
words.  In  the  case  of  real  sensation,  on  the 
contrary,  there  is  an  actual  experience  which 
gives  content  to  our  reflection.  Until  the  actual 
experience  is  given  there  is  no  security  that 
there  is  anything  whatever  corresponding  to 
our  formal  phrases ;  but  when  experience  is 
given  we  have  no  longer  simple  logical  con- 
cepts, but  we  have  something  lived  and  realized. 
Now  Kant  said  that  the  categories  are  applied 
only  to  such  sense  experience  and  otherwise 
are  empty.  Here  he  made  the  mistake  of  limit- 
ing experience  to  the  physical  sensations  and 
did  not  extend  his  doctrine  to  the  data  of  self- 
consciousness.  When  this  limitation  is  removed 
it  then  becomes  strictly  true  that  the  categories 
have  simply  the  function  of  forming  and  ex- 
pressing some  matter  which  is  directly  experi- 
enced or  which  can  be  assimilated  to  experi- 
ence, and  apart  from  that  relation  they  are 
formal  and  empty.  They  must  always  be  brought 


102  PERSONALISM 

into  contact  with  experience  in  some  way  in 
order  to  acquire  reality,  or  to  make  sure  they 
represent  any  possible  object  for  thought. 
Thus  if  we  talk  of  the  categories  of  being, 
unity,  identity,  causality,  substance,  etc.,  in 
abstraction  from  any  given  experience,  they 
are  utterly  vacuous,  so  that  we  cannot  tell 
whether  there  be  any  corresponding  fact  or 
not ;  and  it  is  only  as  we  find  these  categories 
realized  in  living  self-experience  that  they  ac- 
quire other  than  a  formal  meaning,  or  pass  for 
anything  more  than  purely  verbal  counters. 
They  are  like  grammar  when  there  is  no 
speech,  or  rules  for  saying  something  when 
there  is  nothino-  to  be  said. 

Thus,  take  the  category  of  being.  Suppose 
we  ask  what  we  mean  by  it.  At  last  it  would 
be  found  that  it  means  either  objectivity  in 
experience,  or  else  it  means  just  our  own  con- 
scious life.  Any  other  conception  passes  into 
abstraction  and  emptiness.  Similarly  with 
identity.  This  may  mean  the  formal  identity 
of  logical  meaning  or  it  may  be  taken  to  mean 
a   continued   existence  through  a  period  of 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  103 

time.  In  the  latter  case,  which  is  supposed  to 
be  the  metaphysical  meaning,  we  really  do 
not  know  by  speculation  whether  such  a  thing 
be  possible  or  not.  Successive  existence  is  not 
identity,  and  changeless  existence  cannot  be 
found.  Here  again  we  have  to  fall  back  upon 
experience.  Identity  is  given  as  the  self -equal- 
ity of  intelligence  throughout  experience,  and 
any  other  conception  destroys  itself.  In  like 
manner  unity  also  may  be  purely  formal,  as 
when  we  call  a  thing  one ;  but  when  we  come  to 
real  unity  only  experience  can  tell  us  whether 
it  be  possible  and  what  form  it  must  take  on. 
There  can  be  no  real  unity  in  anything  exist- 
ing in  space  and  time,  for  in  that  case  every- 
thing would  be  dispersed  in  infinite  divisi- 
bility. We  find  the  problem  solved  only  in* 
the  unity  of  a  conscious  self,  which  is  the  only 
concrete  unity  that  escapes  the  infinite  disper- 
sion of  space  and  time.  In  like  manner  when 
we  attempt  to  think  causality  abstractly  and 
impersonally  we  find  ourselves  lost  in  the  in- 
finite regress,  and  if  we  escape  it  we  have  no 
means  of  telling  whether  there  is  anything 


104  TERSONALISM 

corresponding  to  our  ideas  or  not.  It  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  find  in  experience  some- 
thing that  will  insure  that  our  ideas  have  some 
corresponding  concrete  existence;  or  else  we 
are  simply  shuffling  verbal  counters,  as  when 
we  speak  of  sensations  of  the  tenth  sense,  or 
we  are  indulging  in  a  calculus  of  imaginary 
quantities.  In  the  latter  cases  there  may  be  a 
certain  formal  grammatical  and  logical  con- 
sistency in  our  utterances,  but  there  is  no  con- 
.tact  with  reality.  In  the  case  of  causation  we 
escape  this  mere  conceptualism  only  as  we  find 
in  the  self-conscious  causality  of  free  intelli- 
gence the  meaning  of  causality  and  the  assur- 
ance that  it  represents  a  fact. 

This  view  might  well  be  called  transcen- 
dental empiricism,  in  distinction  from  the 
traditional  sense  empiricism.  The  meaning  is 
that  all  thought  about  reality  must  be  rooted 
in  experience  and  that  apart  from  experience 
we  never  can  be  sure  whether  our  concep- 
tions represent  any  actual  fact  or  not.  The 
categories  themselves  are  not  something  which 
precede  the  mind  and  found  its  possibility. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  KNOWLEDGE  105 

They  are  rather  modes  of  mental  operation. 
They  are  the  forms  which  the  mind  gives  to 
its  experience,  but  the  mind  is  not  to  be  under- 
stood through  them.  Rather  they  are  to  be 
understood  through  the  mind's  living  expe- 
rience of  itself. 

An  important  bearing  of  this  result  upon 
speculative  thought  should  be  noticed.  Expla- 
nation largely  consists  in  classification ;  that 
is,  in  gathering  similar  things  into  groups  or 
series.  Such  explanation  always  remains  on 
the  surface  and  leaves  the  mystery  of  things 
absolutely  untouched.  No  amount  of  classifi- 
cation gives  us  any  insight.  It  merely  puts  the 
new  fact  into  a  familiar  class  or  refers  it  to 
a  familiar  law ;  but  it  leaves  the  fact  itself 
as  mysterious  in  its  essential  nature  as  ever. 
Thus  when  the  fall  of  a  body  or  the  floating 
of  a  ship  or  the  rising  of  smoke  is  referred 
to  the  law  of  gravity,  we  get  no  insight  into 
the  nature  of  gravitation.  We  simply  see  such 
facts  to  be  cases  of  a  familiar  kind,  but  the 
kind  itself  in  its  inner  nature  is  as  opaque 
as  ever.  Whenever  we  transcend  this  type  of 


106  PERSONALISM 

explanation  we  pass  into  the  causal  realm ; 
and  here  again  we  get  no  real  insight  but  only 
superficial  classification,  unless  we  somewhere 
come  upon  something  which  is  capable  of  real 
explanation  so  as  to  give  us  rational  insight. 
And  this  we  find  only  in  the  case  o£  free  intel- 
ligence. This  is  the  only  causality  of  which 
we  have  any  knowledge  and  the  only  causality 
which  really  explains.  Hence  either  we  must 
content  ourselves  with  superficial  classifica- 
tion, or  else  we  must  find  in  free  intelligence 
the  only  principle  of  causal  explanation. 

This  result  introduces  great  simplicity  into 
speculative  thinking  and  vacates  a  great  deal 
of  speculation  as  formal  and  empty.  When 
our  conceptions  cannot  be  verified  in  spatial 
and  temporal  experience  nor  realized  in  self- 
consciousness,  they  make  no  connection  with 
reality  and  are  to  be  unconditionally  rejected 
as  fictitious  or  barren.  When,  then,  any  new 
speculative  explanation  of  any  fact  whatever  is 
offered  us,  we  ask.  Is  the  explanation  classifica- 
tory  or  causal?  If  the  former,  we  point  out  that 
it  remains  on  the  surface  and  really  explains 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  107 

nothing.  If  the  latter,  we  point  out  that  it 
equally  explains  nothing  unless  the  conception 
of  causality  admits  of  being  verified  in  self- 
consciousness,  as  something  actual  and  not 
merely  formal.  If  it  does  not  meet  this  require- 
ment, then  into  the  fire  with  it,  along  with  the 
mob  of  verbal  theories  which  have  confused 
and  deluded  the  human  mind  from  the  begin- 
ning. 

By  this  time,  probably,  we  may  begin  to 
fear  that  there  is  not  much  basis  left  for 
objective  knowledge,  or  possibly  we  may  think 
when  so  much  is  made  phenomenal,  that  we 
are  not  grasping  reality  at  all ;  and  the  query 
arises  whether,  after  all,  we  are  not  li\ang  in 
the  midst  of  illusion,  and  whether  if  we  knew 
things  as  they  really  are  we  shoidd  not  find 
them  altogether  different  from  what  we  think 
them  to  be.  This  thought  springs  out  of  the 
illusion  that  there  is  an  absolute  system  of 
reality  to  which  our  thoughts  ought  to  corre- 
spond in  order  to  be  true.  This  is  one  of  the 
dogmatic  fictions.  For  us  the  real  can  never 
be  primarily  anything  but  the   contents   of 


108  PERSONALISM 

experience  and  whatever  we  may  infer  from 
them.  Back  of  experience  we  find  no  truly 
real  of  the  noumenal  type,  but  we  infer  or 
affirm  a  cause  which  is  founding  and  maintain- 
ing the  order  of  experience.  To  ask  whether 
this  order  be  true  is  really  meaningless,  unless 
we  suppose  some  absolute  system  of  impersonal 
reality  back  of  experience ;  and  this  notion  is 
baseless.  When  this  is  seen  the  only  permis- 
sible question  becomes  this :  Does  our  experi- 
ence exhaust  the  possibilities  of  experience  and 
consciousness  ?  From  a  theistic  standpoint  the 
universe  itself  is  no  proper  static  existence,  but 
only  the  divine  thought  finding  realization 
through  the  divine  will,  and  that  thought  for 
us  must  find  expression  in  the  order  of  our 
experience.  But  it  is  quite  credible  that  our 
present  experience  does  not  exhaust  the  con- 
tents of  that  thought  and  so  does  not  exhaust 
the  possibilities  of  experience.  If  further  pos- 
sibilities should  unfold  we  should  not  have  a 
truer  experience,  but  a  more  extensive  one. 
Our  present  experience  is  of  a  certain  type,  with 
certain  contents  and  limitations,  and  it  is  en- 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  109 

tirely  possible  tliat  there  should  be  other  beings 
with  different  types  and  contents  of  experi- 
ence. It  is  equally  possible  that  we  ourselves 
shall  pass  into  a  new  order  of  experiences,  in 
which  case  we  should  have  no  right  to  say  that 
the  present  order  is  false,  but  merely  that  it 
is  not  all  and  final.  In  Hke  manner  the  new 
order  would  not  be  rightly  described  as  more 
true  than  the  present  order,  but  only  as  perhaps 
higher  and  richer  in  content,  giving  a  fuller 
and  more  abundant  life.  In  this  sense  there 
may  be  any  number  of  universes  of  experience, 
each  of  which  is  relative  to  its  own  subjects, 
and  all  of  which  are  embraced  in  the  thought 
or  plan  of  the  Infinite  Mind  and  Will  on  which 
they  all  depend. 

Thus  we  dispense  with  the  extra-mental  uni- 
verse of  unreflecting  thought.  That  view  arises 
from  confounding  extra-human  with  extra- 
mental.  We  equally  dispense  with  the  unknow- 
ables  of  agnostic  systems.  These  systems  have 
a  crudely  realistic  foundation  and  a  self-de- 
structive losric.  We  also  set  aside  those  anti- 
climactic  notions  of  transfigured  realism  which 


110  PERSONALISM 

attempts  to  define  reality  apart  from  intelli- 
gence and  ends  by  presenting-  us  with  a  set  of 
barren  and  worthless  abstractions  as  the  truly 
real,  while  the  whole  system  of  living  experi- 
ence is  excluded  from  reality  altogether.  The 
static  universe  which  eludes  knowledge  equally 
disappears,  and  in  its  place  we  have  the  known 
world  of  experience  which  points  to  intelli- 
gence as  its  source.  Thus  we  conserve  the 
sense  of  reality  and  validity  in  knowledge,  and 
at  the  same  time  recognize  the  results  of  criti- 
cism. We  remain  w4iere  we  began,  in  the  world 
of  personal  experience,  and  with  the  strength- 
ened conviction  that  this  world  can  never  be 
explained  on  any  impersonal  plane.  The  world 
of  experience  exists  for  us  only  through  a  ra- 
tional spiritual  principle  by  which  we  repro- 
duce it  for  our  thought,  and  it  has  its  existence 
apart  from  us  only  through  a  rational  spiritual 
principle  on  which  it  depends,  and  the  rational 
nature  of  which  it  expresses.  This  is  our  second 
step  toward  personalism. 


Ill 

PHENOMENALITY    OF    THE   PHYSICAL 
WORLD. 

In  our  last  lecture  we  saw  how  complex 
is  the  process  of  knowledge.  The  object  be- 
comes an  object  for  us  only  through  a  con- 
structive activity  of  our  own  whereby  we 
constitute  the  object  for  consciousness.  But 
this  fact  in  itself,  while  preparing  the  way  for 
phenomenalism,  does  not  establish  it.  We 
have  now  to  consider  the  phenomenality  of 
the  physical  world.  This  is  the  next  step  in 
the  estabHshment  of  personalism. 

For  spdntaneous  thought  all  sense  objects 
exist  as  they  seem,  veritable  substantial  things 
in  space  and  time.  Later  reflection,  however, 
turns  them  into  phenomena,  that  is,  into 
things  which  exist  only  for  and  through  in- 
telligence. It  must  be  noted,  however,  in  ac- 
cordance with  our  previous  discussion,  that 
this  does  not  turn  them  into  illusions  or  de- 


112  PERSONALISM 

lusions.  It  allows  them  still  to  be  real  in  their 
way,  but  finds  that  their  reality  is  not  a  sub- 
stantial and  independent  existence,  but  rather 
consists  in  their  being  forms  and  factors  of 
our  common  experience.  We  have  seen  that 
there  are  two  kinds  of  reality,  phenomenal  and 
ontological.  Only  the  latter  is  substantial ;  the 
former  is  real  for  and  in  experience ;  but  re- 
flective thought  shows  that  it  is  properly  phe- 
nomenal, existing  only  in  and  for  intelligence. 
Spontaneous  thought,  again,  has  no  doubt 
that  space  and  time  exist  as  veritable  things 
of  some  sort.  Indeed,  it  generally  regards  them 
as  the  most  undeniable  of  thing-s.  Thinos  in 
the  ordinary  sense  might  conceivably  be  non- 
existent. We  can  conceive  that  space  which 
is  now  filled  might  be  void,  and  that  time  in 
which  events  occur  should  be  empty,  but  the 
void  space  and  time  would  still,  according  to 
common  sense,  exist,  the  space  in  its  boundless 
extension  and  the  time  in  its  continual  flow. 
For  the  present  we  allow  this  belief  to  stand, 
and  point  out  that  even  then  many  of  the 
things  which  we  suppose  to  exist  in  space  and 


PHENOMENALITY   OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     113 

time  cannot  so  exist  apart  from  the  mediation 
of  intelligence.  In  this  way  we  may  possibly 
accustom  ourselves  to  the  thought  that  this 
world  which  is  known  only  through  intelligence 
also  exists  only  through  and  for  intelligence. 
We  shall  see  that  very  many  things  which  we 
suppose  exist  apart  from  intelligence  would 
really  disappear  if  intelligence  were  away. 

Conceive  a  musical  symphony.  At  first  sight 
we  might  say  the  symphony  exists  in  space 
and  time.  It  is  inclosed  within  the  walls  of 
the  room  and  lies  between  certain  temporal 
limits,  and  therefore  has  temporal  and  spatial 
existence.  This,  however,  is  superficial ;  for  the 
symphony,  apart  from  the  synthetic  and  uni- 
fying action  of  intelligence,  really  cannot  exist 
in  any  assignable  sense.  It  exists,  as  anything 
articulate  and  intelligible,  only  for  the  com- 
poser and  performer  on  the  one  hand,  and  for 
the  audience  on  the  other.  As  something  in 
space  and  time  it  would  consist  of  air  waves 
mutually  external  and  without  unity  or  con- 
nection. The  corresponding  sounds  are  also 
mutually  external  as  spatial  or  temporal  events. 


114  PERSONALISM 

If,  then,  one  were  bent  on  finding  the  sym- 
phony within  the  walls  of  the  room,  and  should 
proceed  to  chase  the  mutually  external  waves 
in  space  and  the  successive  waves  in  time  back 
and  forth  throughout  the  hall  and  the  time  of 
the  playing,  he  would  soon  become  aware  that 
the  symphony,  apart  from  the  unifying  action 
of  consciousness  which  unites  the  many  and 
the  successive  into  one,  would  be  something 
strictly  non-existent  for  intelligence.  However 
real  the  waves  or  the  coexistent  and  successive 
sounds  may  be  in  themselves,  it  is  not  until 
they  are  united  in  a  consciousness  which  grasps 
and  unifies  them  all  in  one  complex  musical 
apprehension  that  the  symphony  exists  or  can 
exist.  All  that  can  take  place  in  space  or  time 
in  connection  with  such  music  is  but  the  means 
for  making  the  musical  conception  pass  into 
act  and  revealing  it  to  other  consciousnesses, 
the  audience ;  but  the  symphony  itself  exists 
primarily  for  the  composer  or  performer,  and 
secondarily  for  the  audience,  and  all  else  is 
but  a  means  for  mediating  the  thought  of  the 
composer  for  the  hearers. 


PHENOMENALITY  OF  PHYSICAL  WORLD     115 

Probably  all  would  admit  this  for  a  sym- 
phony. We  might  say  there  is  nothing  sub- 
stantial in  a  piece  of  music,  and  hence  we  can 
hardly  regard  it  as  anything  abiding  or  exist- 
ing objectively.  But  the  same  must  be  ad- 
mitted for  anything  whatever  that  has  its 
existence  successively,  that  is,  in  time.  Every 
such  successive  thing,  in  itself,  is  made  up  of 
mutually  external  existences,  and  these  attain 
to  any  abiding  existence  only  through  the 
activity  of  some  non-successive  being  which  is 
able  to  unite  the  successive  existences  into  the 
thought  of  something  fixed  and  permanent. 
Every  such  successive  thing  must  be  phenom- 
enal, for,  like  the  symphony,  it  exists  and  can 
exist  only  for  and  through  intelligence.  Or  if 
we  prefer  to  say  the  thing  exists,  then  the 
claim  is  that  it  exists  only  through  intelligence. 
This  we  now  proceed  to  show. 

Experience  shows  only  two  kinds  of  perma- 
nence, fixity  of  meaning  and  permanence  of 
the  thinking  subject.  The  first  is  logical  same- 
ness, or  identity  of  meaning,  and  is  absolutely 


116  PERSONALISM 

necessary  to  any  thought  whatever.  If  the 
meaning  of  things  could  change  from  moment 
to  moment,  no  thought  would  be  possible. 
Sensation  itself,  as  we  have  seen,  is  possible 
as  anything  articulate  only  as  the  flowing 
impression  is  fixed  into  an  abiding  meaning 
of  which  the  impression  may  be  the  bearer  or 
manifestation,  while  the  meaning  gives  the 
significance  of  the  impression.  Without  such 
fixed  meaning  even  the  simple  sensation  van- 
ishes into  an  inarticulate  impression,  about 
which  nothing  whatever  can  be  said.  Simi- 
larly in  the  case  of  any  changing  or  develop- 
ing thing,  we  form  some  conception  which 
gathers  up  all  the  phases  of  the  thing  into 
one  thought  which  expresses  the  true  nature 
of  the  thing.  If  it  were  impossible  to  express 
the  nature  of  the  thing,  however  changing, 
by  some  abiding  conception,  then  we  should 
need  a  new  thought  for  each  new  phase  of 
the  thing;  and  as  the  thing  is  incessantly 
changing,  we  should  need  an  incessant  stream 
of  new  conceptions,  with  the  result  that  we 
should  lose  the  thing  altogether  in  the  mul- 


PHENOMENALITY   OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     117 

tiplicity  of  conceptions  which  would  be 
affirmed. 

This  formal  or  logical  sameness,  as  the  su- 
preme condition  of  thought,  is  formulated  in 
the  law  of  identity  :  A  equals  A,  which  means 
that  everything,  whatever  it  may  be,  fixed  or 
changing,  must  admit  of  being  conceived  in 
such  a  way  as  to  be  an  abiding  object  or  have 
an  abiding  meaning  for  intelligence.  Without 
this,  as  said,  it  vanishes  altogether. 

But  it  is  plain  that  this  formal  sameness  is 
only  for  intelligence.  The  fixed  meaning,  as 
such,  does  not  and  cannot  exist  in  space  and 
time,  for  there  everything  is  flowing  and 
changing.  The  fixed  meaning  is  simply  what 
the  object  is  for  intelligence,  but  the  thing 
conceived  of  as  temporal  never  at  any  instant 
realizes  that  fixed  meaning.  The  meaning  is 
only  successively  translated  into  the  temporal 
form,  and  never  really  exists  except  for  the 
mind,  which  by  means  of  it  masters  the  flow- 
ing succession.  The  symphony  again  illustrates 
the  fact.  The  symphony  never  exists  in  time, 
and  never  can  so  exist  except  for  a  non-tem- 


118  PERSONALISM 

poral  consciousness.  In  the  same  way  the  flow- 
ing world  of  change  exists  for  us  only  through 
the  system  of  changeless  ideas,  and  these  are 
impossible  and  meaningless  apart  from  intelli- 
gence. Thus  intelligence  appears  as  the  su- 
preme condition  of  the  existence  of  those  things 
which  seem  to  us  independent  of  all  intelli- 
gence. If  the  things  themselves  are  really  pro- 
cesses in  space  and  time,  they  become  any- 
thing articulate  for  us  only  through  the  ideas 
by  which  we  fix  the  processes  into  a  meaning. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  plain  that  these 
processes  could  not  be  grasped  through  these 
ideas  unless  they  were  really  the  expressions 
of  ideas.  It  would  be  incredible  that  we  should 
know  things  by  ideas  essentially  unrelated  to 
them  ;  and  as  the  ideas  by  which  the  things 
are  constituted  are  independent  of  us,  there 
must  be  a  supreme  intelligence  behind  the 
thinsfs  which  makes  them  the  bearer  or  ex- 
pression  of  the  ideas.  We  cannot  understand 
noises  unless  they  are  informed  with  thought, 
and  they  can  be  informed  with  thought  only 
as  there  is  a  thinker  at  the  other  end.    In  the 


PHENOMENALITY   OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     119 

same  way  things  can  be  grasped  by  thought 
only  as  they  are  the  products  of  thought. 

The  same  problem  reappears  in  the  debate 
between  nominalism  and  realism,  and  this  also 
admits  only  of  an  idealistic  solution.  The 
realist  rightly  holds  that  the  particular  is 
nothing  except  as  the  expression  of  an  idea, 
and  the  nominalist  rightly  holds  that  the  idea 
is  nothing  apart  from  concrete  realizfi^tion.  A 
pure  particular,  without  any  universal  element, 
would  disappear  entirely  from  thought ;  and 
a  pure  universal,  with  no  local  habitation  or 
name,  would  float  in  the  air  without  contact 
with  reality.  There  can  be  no  living  experi- 
ence without  both  elements,  and  there  can  be 
no  experience  apart  from  an  immanent  intel- 
ligence. 

These  formal  identities  of  classification, 
also,  common  sense  woidd  be  fairly  ready  to 
hand  over  to  phenomenalism.  Classes  as  such 
have  only  conceptual  existence ;  but  the  case 
is  thouofht  to  be  different  with  thing's.  There 
is  in  them  a  substantial  identity,  which  re- 
mains the  same  through  change.  In  addition 


120  PERSONALISM 

to  the  formal  fixity  of  meaning-,  there  is  also 
a  real  sameness  of  being.  Here,  then,  we  have 
not  merely  the  identity  of  logic,  but  also  the 
concrete  and  substantial  identity  of  things ; 
and  this,  common  sense  holds,  cannot  be  argued 
away  into  any  shadowy  phenomenality.  This 
brings  us  to  consider  the  problem  of  change 
and  identity  in  impersonal  things. 
» 

On  this  point  there  have  been  two  posi- 
tions since  the  earliest  times  in  philosophy. 
One  school,  the  Eleatic,  has  held  to  identity 
and  permanence  in  things  and  has  excluded 
change  from  their  existence  ;  the  other,  the 
Heraclitic,  has  maintained  the  reality  of 
change  and  has  found  it  impossible  to  dis- 
cover any  permanence  in  existence.  Change 
penetrates  into  being  itself,  so  that  all  things 
flow.  Each  school  has  been  able  to  convict 
the  other  of  irrationality,  but  on  the  imper- 
sonal plane  neither  school  has  been  able  to 
set  its  own  house  in  order  so  as  to  satisfy 
reason  and  log^ic. 

In  criticism  of  the  Eleatic  view,  it  is  plain 


PHENOMENALITY   OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     121 

that  the  changing  world  of  experience,  which 
is  the  fact  immediately  given,  can  never  by 
any  possibility  bring  us  to  a  world  of  change- 
less existences  in  any  literal  and  absolute  sense 
of  the  term ;  for  if  there  were  a  world  of  such 
changeless  character,  it  could  never  be  brought 
into  any  assignable  relation  to  the  changing 
world.  We  could  never  logically  reach  it  from 
that  world,  and  we  could  never  make  any  use 
of  it  for  the  explanation  of  the  changing 
world.  The  common-sense  view  of  the  matter 
seeks  to  make  a  kind  of  division  of  labor  in 
the  case  of  the  thing,  putting  the  permanence 
or  identity  into  some  back-lying  core,  and  put- 
ting the  change  into  the  activities  or  qualities 
of  the  thing.  These  are  supposed  to  change, 
while  the  permanent  core  simply  abides  and 
maintains  its  identity.  But  it  is  manifest  that 
this  view  is  altogether  impossible  ;  for  if  there 
be  no  change  in  things,  there  is  no  assignable 
reason  why  there  should  be  any  changes  in  the 
activities  of  things  or  among  things.  The  rigid 
monotony  and  identity  of  substance  must  lead 
to  an  equally  rigid  monotony  and  identity  of 


122  PERSONALISM 

activity  or  manifestation  of  whatever  kind.  But 
since  the  actual  world  is  a  world  of  change 
and  motion,  we  cannot,  reasoning  backward  by 
the  law  of  the  sufficient  reason,  come  to  any- 
thing unchanging,  and  in  that  sense  perma- 
nent. Common  sense  may  be  perfectly  correct 
in  saying  that  there  must  be  something  per- 
manent, but  it  is  certainly  incorrect  in  finding 
that  permanence  in  some  rigidly  changeless 
and  identical  substance. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  disciple  of  uni- 
versal change  has  failed  to  inquire  what  the 
perception  or  existence  of  such  change  would 
demand.  Manifestly  if  all  things  changed, 
the  thinking  subject  among  the  rest,  the  no- 
tion of  change  could  never  arise ;  for  it  is  only 
as  this  change  is  projected  upon  and  con- 
trasted with  an  abiding  background  of  some 
kind,  possibly  the  self-consciousness  of  the 
thinking  subject,  that  even  the  conception  of 
change  is  possible.  We  have  already  seen 
that  the  formal  identity  of  meaning  is  neces- 
sary in  order  to  think  at  all;  and  now  it 
appears  that  in  some  way  an  identity  of  the 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL   WORLD     123 

subject  is  equally  necessary  in  order  to  make 
even  the  conception  of  change  possible. 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  only  identities  we 
can  find  in  the  thing;  world  are  the  formal 
identities  of  logical  meaning,  and  when  we 
attempt  to  find  anything  more  in  the  way  of 
concrete  identity  in  the  thing  world  we  look 
for  it  in  vkin.  All  that  we  come  upon  is  fixity 
of  form  or  process,  and  the  only  concrete  iden- 
tity we  can  find  anywhere  turns  out  to  be  the 
unity  of  the  conscious  subject.  But  this  iden- 
tity is  not  to  be  viewed  as  any  rigid  core  of 
being,  but  rather  as  the  self -equality  of  intel- 
ligence through  its  experience,  and  the  change 
which  we  discover  is  not  a  successive  running 
off  of  events  in  abstract  time,  but  is  rather 
and  only  the  form  under  which  the  self-equal 
intelligence  realizes  its  conceptions  under  the 
relation  of  succession.  On  the  impersonal 
plane  this  problem  of  change  and  identity  ad- 
mits of  no  solution.  We  cannot  find  the  ab- 
stract identity,  and  we  cannot  find  the  abstract 
changes  when  we  look  for  them.  We  have 
simply  a  world  of  experience  in  which  the  same 


124  PERSONALISM 

ideas  and  forms  remain  valid,  and  through 
which  the  conscious  subject  remains  as  the 
only  fixed  point  to  which  everything,  both 
permanence  and  change,  has  to  be  referred. 
Self-consciousness  is  the  origin  of  ordinates  in 
this  field,  and  whenever  we  transfer  the  prob- 
lem to  the  impersonal  world  of  space  and  time 
and  abstract  principles,  we  soon  find  it  eluding 
us  or  vanishing  in  insoluble  contradictions. 

Similar  reflections  on  the  problem  of  caus- 
ation, as  metaphysics  shows,  would  compel  us 
to  regard  the  so-called  world  of  things  as 
merely  processes  of  an  energy  not  their  own ; 
such  processes,  then,  would  be  necessarily  phe- 
nomenal. Having  in  themselves  no  substan- 
tiality, they  would  become  only  phases  of  an 
activity  beyond  them.  As  such  they  would 
have  only  the  permanence  of  a  process  which 
is  essentially  successive,  and  as  such,  again, 
they  can  exist  only  for  intelligence ;  that  is, 
these  supposed  substantial  things  become  like 
our  symphony.  In  the  symphony  a  musical 
idea  is  successively  unfolded,  and  in  the  unity 
of  that  idea  and  the  continuity  of  its  manifes- 


PHENOMENALITY   OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     125 

tation  through  the  activity  of  the  performer 
and  the  receptivity  of  the  audience  the  sym- 
phony has  its  only  existence;  but  in  itself,  in 
abstraction  from  the  idea  and  the  performer, 
it  breaks  up  into  an  inarticulate  and  chaotic 
mass  of  sounds.  In  the  same  way  impersonal 
things  are  reduced  to  processes  in  which  a 
phenomenal  form  may  be  maintained  or  an 
idea  continuously  or  successively  manifested, 
but  which  nevertheless  exists  only  in  and 
through  the  continuous  process  and  the  abid- 
ing meaning,  and  in  abstraction  from  these 
they  also  became  meaningless  and  as  empty 
of  significance  as  the  symphony  would  be  in 
abstraction  from  the  performer  and  the  audi- 
ence. 

These  considerations  serve  to  show  that  in- 
telligence plays  no  small  part  in  the  existence 
of  those  things  which  we  regard  as  existing 
independently  of  intelligence  in  space  and 
time.  Upon  analysis  we  fail  to  find  the  sup- 
posed core  of  being  or  stuff  upon  which  com- 
mon sense  relies  in  its  picture  logic  in  this 
matter,  and  in  place  of  it  we  discover  simply 


126  PERSONALISM 

the  idea,  the  process,  the  succession,  which 
needs  intelligence  to  sum  it  up  and  inform  it 
with  meaning-,  so  that  it  becomes  anything 
intelligible  and  articulate  for  us. 
.  This  result  would  be  valid  for  the  world  of 
things  in  space  and  time,  even  if  we  supposed 
space  and  time  to  be  themselves  real  existences 
as  common  sense  views  them.  Even  then  the 
things  of  experience  could  be  helped  to  real 
existence  only  through  a  constitutive  and  syn- 
thesizing intelligence.  But  there  are  many 
reasons  for  saying  that  space  and  time  them- 
selves are  only  phenomena,  and  that  of  course 
carries  with  it  the  phenomenality  of  everything 
that  appears  in  them,  that  is,  the  phenomenal- 
ity of  the  whole  system  of  objective  experience. 

This  view,  however,  seems  so  great  a  para- 
dox as  to  border  on  the  limits  of  absurdity  if 
it  does  not  transcend  them.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
a  view  to  which  we  seem  to  be  shut  up,  and 
the  view  to  which  reflective  thought  is  quite 
generally  coming.  We  will  seek,  therefore,  to 
explain  it,  so  as  to  remove  something  of  the 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL    WORLD     127 

paradox  and  help  ourselves  to  a  better  under- 
standing" of  what  it  means. 

And,  first  of  all,  we  must  distinguish  between 
phenomenal  and  ontological  reality  in  the  case. 
For  experience,  space  and  time  are  perfectly 
valid  as  forms  or  laws  of  the  same.  We  can- 
not have  experience  of  a  certain  type  which  is 
non-spatial,  neither  can  we  have  experience 
into  which  the  temporal  form  does  not  enter. 
Phenomenally,  then,  space  and  time  are  real, 
that  is,  they  are  valid  in  and  for  our  experi- 
ence, and  there  can  be  no  thought  of  deny- 
ing this  validity.  In  this  sense,  spontaneous 
thought  is  quite  correct  in  maintaining  the 
reality  of  space  and  time;  but  when  on  the 
other  hand  they  are  taken  to  be  something 
independent  of  experience,  lying  beyond  and 
behind  experience  as  its  pre-condition,  then 
common  sense  has  wandered  into  metaphysics 
and  has  hypostasized  the  conditions  of  experi- 
ence into  independent  existences.  In  this  way 
the  two  great  phantoms  of  space  and  time  have 
been  produced,  which  have  exercised  so  per- 
nicious an  influence  in  the  history  of  thought. 


128  PERSONALISM 

To  common  sense  it  is  at  first  sight  incred- 
ible that  this  view  should  ever  be  held  by  any 
one,  because  it  would  seem  that  we  are  im- 
mediately aware  of  ourselves  as  in  space  and 
time.  And  therefore  only  a  person  insane  or 
irredeemably  frivolous  would  think  of  arguing 
about  their  existence  ;  and  moreover  the  exist- 
ence itself  is  so  manifest,  so  obvious,  so  unde- 
niable, that  there  is  no  mystery  about  it,  and 
no  question  as  to  its  reality. 

So  indeed  it  seems,  but  first  of  all  episte- 
mology  points  out  that  space  and  time,  how- 
ever real  they  may  be  in  themselves,  cannot 
become  real  to  us  except  as  they  are  principles 
of  thought  or  principles  immanent  in  our 
mental  operation.  For  us  space,  like  all  other 
things,  exists  only  through  our  own  mental 
construction,  and  apart  from  that  construc- 
tion, however  real  it  might  be,  it  would  not 
exist  for  us  at  all.  The  primary  fact  epistemo- 
logically  is  that  we  relate  our  objects  in  the 
spatial  and  temporal  form  because  of  the  space 
and  time  law  immanent  in  intelligence ;  and 
all    our  experiences  or  intuitions  respecting 


PHENOMENALITY  OF   PHYSICAL   WORLD     129 

space  and  time  must  be  understood  from  the 
side  of  the  mental  law.  Thus,  with  regard  to 
space,  we  have  no  original  intuition  of  an 
existing  space  which  is  one  and  infinite  and 
all-embracing,  but  we  relate  all  our  objects  of 
a  certain  kind  in  a  common  scheme  in  which 
we  can  find  our  way  from  any  one  to  any 
other  by  a  continuous  and  homogeneous  pro- 
cess. Hence  we  regard  space  as  one.  Again, 
this  synthesis  applies  to  all  objects  of  a  cer- 
tain kind,  so  that  we  cannot  conceive  any 
such  objects  as  lying  beyond  its  range.  Hence 
we  regard  space  as  all-embracing.  Finally, 
the  synthesis  admits  of  no  exhaustion,  but 
rather  provides  for  indefinite  repetition.  As 
we  cannot  exhaust  number  by  counting,  so 
we  cannot  exhaust  space  by  any  progressive 
synthesis.  Hence  we  regard  space  as  infinite. 
But  the  unity,  the  infinity,  and  the  all-em- 
bracing character  of  space  depend  entirely 
upon  the  nature  of  the  space  law.  They  are 
but  the  results  of  the  inexhaustibility  and  uni- 
versal applicability  of  the  space  law  within  its 
own  sphere. 


130  PERSONALISM 

The  same  is  true  for  the  unity  and  eternity 
of  time.  There  is  no  immediate  apprehension 
of  time  as  anything  one  and  eternal,  but  the 
time  law  by  which  we  relate  the  objects  of  ex- 
perience to  one  another  and  the  conscious  self 
admits  of  no  exhaustion,  and  hence  we  regard 
time  as  eternal ;  but  the  unity  and  eternity  of 
time,  like  that  of  space,  mean  only  the  one- 
ness and  inexhaustibility  of  the  synthetic  law 
by  which  we  relate  objects.  Now,  given  this 
law,  we  should  have  temporal  and  spatial  ex- 
perience, whatever  the  independent  fact  might 
be.  Or  we  should  have  temporal  and  spatial 
experience  if  there  were  no  objective  space 
and  time  whatever.  Illustration  of  this  occurs 
in  every  vivid  dream.  The  dream  time  and 
space  have  nothing  in  common  with  the  time 
and  space  of  waking  experience.  They  are 
simply  the  form  of  the  dream,  the  form  which 
the  mind  itself  gives  to  its  dream  objects;  and 
when  the  dream  breaks  up  and  vanishes,  we 
do  not  suppose  that  the  space  in  which  the 
dream  occurred  is  left  over  for  later  dreams, 
but  the  space  and  time  vanish  with  the  dream 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL  WORLD     131 

experience,  as  simply  the  space  and  time  of 
that  experience. 

That  this  is  the  ease  with  the  dream  expe- 
rience every  one  will  admit.  We  see  that  the 
space  and  time  relations  of  the  dream  have 
nothing  in  common  with  our  waking  space 
and  time  relations,  and  we  also  see  that  those 
space  and  time  relations  are  instituted  by  the 
mind  in  its  dream  activity  such  that  the  ob- 
jects often  stand  out  for  us  with  all  the  vivid- 
ness of  waking  experience.  In  such  cases  we 
have  a  clear  illustration  of  the  fact  that  the 
mind  can  build  for  itself  an  experience  in  the 
space  and  time  form  out  of  its  own  resources 
without  any  corresponding  space  and  time  in 
existence.  But  the  same  general  view  must  be 
taken  of  our  so-called  real  space  and  time. 
They  are  really  only  the  form  of  our  outer 
and  inner  experience.  They  consist  of  rela- 
tions among  the  objects  of  experience,  and  if 
we  should  conceive  the  experience  itself  to  be 
canceled  there  would  be  nothing  left  behind 
corresponding  to  space  and  time,  so  that  in- 
stead of  being  veritable  somewhats  in  which 


132  PERSONALISM 

things  exist  and  events  occur,  they  are  rather 
and  only  the  forms  of  experience  and  have 
their  heing  only  in  and  through  intelligence 
itself. 

The  general  reason  for  this  conclusion  is 
the  fact  that  as  soon  as  we  break  space  and 
time  from  their  connection  with  experience  as 
its  form,  and  regard  them  as  something  inde- 
pendent of  it  which  contains  experience,  then 
all  manner  of  contradictions  emerge  at  once 
and  existence  itself  is  made  impossible.  Thus 
in  the  case  of  space,  the  general  law  of  space, 
when  space  is  conceived  of  as  independently 
existing,  would  be  the  mutual  externality  of 
points  and  parts.  Every  point  and  part  is  out- 
side of  every  other  point  and  part,  and  the 
distinction  of  points  and  parts  admits  of  no 
end,  the  result  being  that  space,  conceived 
of  as  independently  real,  admits  of  indefinite 
division,  and  in  that  case  the  things  which 
are  in  space  would  likewise  admit  of  indefinite 
division,  and  in  that  case,  again,  being  itself 
would  be  dispersed  into  endless  plurality  with- 
out unity  through  the  endless  divisibility  of 


PHENOMENALITY  OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     133 

space.  Thus,  conceive  a  cubic  foot  of  space. 
It  has  in  itself  no  unity  except  the  formal  one 
which  we  give  it  by  calling  it  a  cubic  foot ; 
but  in  itself,  if  we  make  the  cubic  inch  a  unit, 
the  cubic  foot  is  not  one  but  seventeen  hun- 
dred and  twenty-eight,  and  each  cubic  inch  is 
in  the  same  condition ;  and,  again,  there  can  be 
no  unity,  but  plurality  and  mutual  externality 
without  end.  If,  however,  we  conceive  a  sub- 
stance to  exist  in  a  real  space  of  this  kind,  the 
same  fact  applies.  If  there  were  a  cubic  foot 
of  such  substance,  then  the  parts  in  the  seven- 
teen hundred  and  twenty-eight  cubic  inches 
would  also  be  mutually  external,  and  these 
again  could  be  divided  indefinitely;  and  thus 
once  more  we  lose  ourselves  in  the  infinite 
divisibility.  These  mutually  external  parts 
could  be  no  true  units,  as  each  would  lie  out- 
side of  every  other,  and  they  could  be  held 
together  and  held  apart  only  as  we  make  each 
part  the  centre  of  attractive  and  repulsive 
forces  of  some  sort,  whereby  each  should  pre- 
scribe to  every  other  its  place ;  and  thus  again 
the  supposed  unitary  being  would  disappear 


134  PERSONALISM 

in  an  indefinite  plurality,  to  which  no  limit 
could  be  assigned.  No  unit  could  be  found, 
because  in  the  nature  of  such  a  process  there 
is  no  unit  possible.  The  nature  of  the  sjDace 
law  forbids  any  unit  in  such  a  case.  If,  how- 
ever, we  regard  space  as  only  phenomenal,  we 
then  have  to  continue  our  divisions  only  so 
far  as  experience  may  indicate.  We  are  not 
required  to  affirm  an  infinite  extension  and 
divisibility  of  space,  but  an  indefinite  exten- 
sion and  divisibility  of  phenomena ;  for  while 
the  space  law  itself,  like  the  law  of  number, 
contains  no  provision  for  stopping,  its  concrete 
ajDplication,  as  in  the  case  of  number,  must 
always  depend  upon  the  nature  of  experience 
and  not  upon  the  abstract  law  itself.  In  that 
case,  as  Kant  showed  in  the  first  two  antino- 
mies, we  escape  the  impossibilities  involved  in 
the  notion  of  a  finite  or  infinite  space  or  a 
finite  or  infinite  divisibility  of  space. 

Similarly  in  the  case  of  time,  the  notion  of 
time  as  the  form  of  our  experience  is  perfectly 
simple  and  level  to  every  intelligence.  As 
Berkeley  has  it,  I  may  make  an  engagement 


1 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL   WORLD     135 

to  meet  a  person  at  a  certain  place  and  a  cer- 
tain time,  and  every  one  understands  what  this 
means.  But  when  I  abstract  from  these  rela- 
tions of  concrete  experience  and  begin  to  con- 
sider space  and  time  in  themselves,  then  I  am 
lost  and  embrangled  in  inextricable  difficul- 
ties. Berkeley  added  that  the  consideration 
of  this  abstract  time  led  him  to  "harbor  odd 
thouofhts"  of  his  own  existence. 

In  the  case  of  time  these  "embranoflino;" 
difficulties  appear  in  the  fact  that  time  itself, 
considered  as  a  real  something  flowing  along, 
is  full  of  contradictions.  Indeed  this  con- 
ception of  time  is  the  chief  source  of  those 
puzzles  by  which,  to  use  another  phrase  of 
Berkeley's,  speculative  thought  in  all  ages  has 
been  so  "miserably  bantered."  As  specimens 
of  the  "bantering,"  consider  the  difficulty  in 
the  notion  of  a  standing  or  flowing  time.  If 
time  stands,  then  time  as  a  whole  exists,  that 
is,  past  and  future  coexist.  Thus  the  time 
idea  disappears.  But  if  time  as  a  whole  flows, 
we  can  form  as  little  idea  of  this  as  we  can  of 
a  moving  space.  An  infinite  space  that  moved 


136  PERSONALISM 

to  the  right,  and  left  a  spaceless  void  on  the 
left,  would  be  no  more  absurd  than  a  moving 
time.  Such  a  time  must  move  out  of  itself  in 
the  past  and  leave  a  timeless  void  behind  it, 
and  it  must  move  into  a  timeless  void  before 
it,  or  it  must  move  into  itself  and  telescope 
itself — all  of  which  notions  are  impossible. 
Again,  supposing  time  to  be  substantially  real, 
rather  than  a  form  of  experience,  it  is  clear 
that  things  can  exist  only  in  the  present. 
They  cannot  exist  in  the  past  and  they  cannot 
exist  in  the  future.  But  on  the  other  hand 
they  cannot  exist  in  the  present,  for  the  pre- 
sent is  only  the  timeless  plane  of  separation 
between  the  past  and  the  future.  If  we  should 
conceive  the  present  itself  to  have  duration  in 
it,  either  we  should  have  a  past  and  future  in 
the  present,  or  we  should  deny  the  continuity 
of  the  temporal  flow.  But  if,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  present  has  no  duration,  then  things 
cannot  exist  at  all.  Results  like  these  make 
plain  to  us  that  we  are  on  the  wrong  track  in 
seeking  to  make  time  and  space  independent 
somethings  apart  from  experience.  They  are 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL   WORLD     137 

rather  the  forms  of  that  experience.  They  have 
their  meaning  only  in  relation  to  that  experi- 
ence, and  considered  in  abstraction  from  that 
experience  they  become  simply  the  portentous 
phantoms  of  unreflective  thought,  and,  like  all 
phantoms,  they  disappear  upon  investigation. 
What  was  said  of  the  finitude  or  infinitude 
of  space  may  be  repeated  respecting  time.  If 
time  were  a  veritable  existence,  we  should  have 
to  resrard  it  as  either  finite  or  infinite  ;  but  the 
caseis  different  when  time  is  made  phenomenal. 
The  time  law,  indeed,  makes  no  provision  for 
beginning  or  ending,  but  its  concrete  applica- 
tion must  always  depend  upon  the  nature  of 
experience  and  not  upon  the  abstract  law  itself. 
On  the  basis  of  experience  we  can  af&rm 
neither  the  finitude  nor  the  infinitude  of  the 
temporal  series,  but  must  confine  ourselves  to 
what  we  find  in  experience.  Hence  to  the  claim 
that  space  and  time  must  be  either  finite  or 
infinite,  and  finitely  or  infinitely  divisible,  the 
claim  out  of  which  Kant  developed  the  first  two 
antinomies,  the  reply  is  that  as  forms  of  expe- 
rience they  are  neither  finite  nor  infinite,  and 


138  PERSONALISM 

that  experience  finds  no  occasion  to  decide  for 
one  or  the  other  of  these  alternatives. 

To  this  result  thought  assuredly  comes ;  but 
some  further  exposition  is  needed  to  bring  it  out 
into  clearness.  For  we  and  all  things  seem  to  be 
so  manifestly  in  space  and  time  that  any  argu- 
ment against  it,  however  irrefutable  it  might 
be  in  logic,  would  still  produce  no  conviction. 
This  thou«;ht  rests  to  some  extent  on  the  over- 
sight  of  the  distinction  already  made  between 
phenomenal  and  ontological  reality.  As  we 
have  so  often  said,  there  is  no  thought  of  deny- 
ing the  phenomenal  reality  of  space  and  time, 
but  only  their  ontological  existence.  If,  then, 
we  are  asked.  Are  things  in  space  and  time?  we 
answer.  Yes,  or  no,  according  to  the  standpoint. 
Things  are  in  space  and  time  as  having  space 
and  time  relations  in  our  experience.  They  are 
not  in  space  and  time  as  something  independ- 
ent of  experience,  and  which  would  be  there  if 
experience  were  away.  For  the  rest,  the  diffi- 
culty in  accepting  the  view  rests  on  the  failure 
to  observe  the  relativity  in  the  spatial  and  tem- 
poral judgment  which  arise  from  the  limitations 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL  WORLD     139 

of  the  judging  subject.  The  whole  matter 
takes  on  a  different  aspect  from  this  stand- 
point. 

In  the  previous  lecture,  when  speaking  of  the 
relation  of  our  mental  forms  to  the  independ- 
ent object,  we  pointed  out  that  these  forms 
cannot  be  arbitrarily  imposed  upon  the  object, 
but  that  the  object  itself  must  have  an  af&nity 
for  some  forms  rather  than  others  ;  otherwise 
the  connection  of  thought  and  thing  would  be 
purely  a  random  one.  But  we  cannot  see  the 
square  as  round,  or  the  crooked  as  straight,  or 
change  the  forms  and  positions  of  things  at 
pleasure.  And,  in  general,  in  order  that  spatial 
phenomena  shall  appear  as  they  are  and  where 
they  are,  there  must  be  something  in  the  dy- 
namic relations  of  the  system  which  demands 
just  this  order  and  no  other.  The  space  rela- 
tions, then,  are  not  arbitrarily  imposed  upon  a 
system  which  is  indifferent  to  them ;  they  are 
rather  the  translation  into  intuitional  forms 
of  the  unpicturable  dynamism  of  the  system. 
The  same  is  true  for  time  relations  also.  We 
cannot  reverse  the  time  order  so  as  to  make  the 


140  PERSONALISM 

antecedent  the  consequent,  or  put  yesterday 
after  to-day.  Here  is  an  order  whicli,  while 
phenomenal,  is  also  fixed  ;  and  this  fact  can 
be  understood  only  as  the  time  relation  is  con- 
nected with  a  deeper  dynamic  relation.  From 
this  dynamic  standpoint  both  the  spatial  and 
the  temporal  judgment  in  their  concrete  ap- 
plication are  greatly  modified,  and  their  rela- 
tivity is  placed  in  a  clearer  light. 

We  note  this  first  in  the  case  of  space. 
When  we  attempt  to  locate  the  percipient  mind 
in  space,  we  find  it  impossible  to  do  so.  The 
unity  of  the  mental  subject  will  not  unite 
with  the  spatial  form  of  existence.  Neverthe- 
less we  have  in  our  experience  the  antithesis  of 
here  and  there,  and  all  concrete  judgments  of 
space  depend  upon  it.  In  the  purely  geometri- 
cal judgment  there  is  nothing  concrete,  and  the 
whole  matter  lies  within  the  spatial  intuition. 
But  in  concrete  experience  the  matter  is  differ- 
ent, and  the  position  of  the  person  himself  be- 
comes the  origin  of  all  space  judgments.  The 
subject  establishes  himself  in  a  central  here,  in 
antithesis  to  an  all-surrounding  there.  Into  this 


PHENOMENALITY   OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     141 

judgment  the  organism  itself  enters  to  a  not- 
able degree,  and  the  here  of  the  subject  cannot 
be  determined  as  a  point  in  objective  space,  as 
that  would  eliminate  the  subject  altogether. 
On  the  contrary,  the  here  is  determined  by  the 
subject's  immediate  activity.  Instead  of  saying 
we  act  where  we  are,  we  must  literally  reverse 
the  proposition  and  say  we  are  where  we  im- 
mediately act.  No  other  definition  of  presence 
or  location  can  be  given.  In  that  case  our 
presence,  or  our  here,  becomes  relative  to  the 
ranofe  of  our  immediate  action.  If  we  could 
act  as  immediately  and  effectively  on  things 
beyond  the  sea  as  we  do  upon  things  at  arm's 
length,  we  should  be  as  present  beyond  the  sea 
as  we  are  in  our  immediate  neighborhood.  Or 
if  our  organic  activities  embraced  the  whole 
earth  as  immediately  and  intimately  as  they 
embrace  what  we  call  our  body,  we  should  be 
present  to  the  earth  in  the  same  sense  as  we 
are  now  present  to  the  organism.  Thus  we  see 
that  concrete  presence  is  nothing  that  can  be 
geometrically  determined  in  an  absolute  space, 
but  is  rather  a  function  of  our  dynamic  rela- 


142  PERSONALISM 

tious.  It  is  the  dynamic  relation  that  deter- 
mines the  space  relations.  And  we  also  see 
that  presence  in  sj)ace  is  relative  to  our  dy- 
namic range.  Immediate  action  is  presence ; 
immediate  action  on  all  things  is  omnipre- 
sence. But  neither  presence  nor  omnipresence 
is  to  be  conceived  as  filling  a  spatial  volume 
by  a  limited  or  unlimited  bulk.  Now  from 
this  dynamic  point  of  view,  being  in  space  ac- 
quires an  entirely  new  meaning.  We  are  not 
in  space  as  existing  somewhere  in  a  boundless 
void  or  in  a  void  of  any  kind ;  but  we  are  in 
space  as  limited  in  our  dynamic  range  and  as 
able  therefore  to  work  only  mediately  on  most 
things.  It  is  this  dynamic  relation  and  limita- 
tion which  underlies  our  spatial  experience. 
And  so  long  as  the  limitation  continues,  so 
long  we  shall  have  the  corresponding  spatial 
limitation  in  experience.  The  ideality  of  space 
therefore  does  not  permit  us  to  transcend  space 
in  experience,  but  it  does  enable  us  to  dismiss 
the  great  phantom  of  an  all-embracing  void. 
But  only  the  infinite  and  absolute  being  can  be 
said  to  transcend  space  in  the  sense  of  limita- 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL   WORLD     143 

tion.  On  the  other  hand,  while  space  relations 
obtain  among  the  objects  of  experience,  the 
totality  of  things  does  not  exist  in  space  at  all, 
but  rather  and  only  in  the  infinite  conscious- 
ness and  will.  If  we  will  ask  for  the  place 
of  the  world,  we  must  say  the  Divine  IntelH- 
gence  is  that  place,  and  this  in  turn  is  space- 
less but  establishes  space  relations.  And  the 
system  of  things  spacelessly  and  unpicturably 
depends  on  the  spaceless  and  unpicturable 
God. 

Much  the  same  thing  is  to  be  said  of  the 
time  judgment.  There  is  a  great  deal  here  also 
that  is  relative  to  our  human  limitations,  and 
for  understanding  the  ideality  of  time  it  is 
necessary  to  bear  this  in  mind.  Time  can  be 
interpreted  only  from  the  side  of  experience, 
and  more  especially  from  the  standpoint  of 
self-consciousness.  Experience,  we  have  seen, 
cannot  be  in  the  present  as  a  separate  point 
of  time,  but  rather  the  present  is  in  experience. 
We  cannot  define  the  present  as  a  point  in 
an  independent  time,  and  if  we  could  it  would 
be  simply  the  plane  of  separation  between  past 


144  PERSONALISM 

and  future,  and  existence  would  be  made  im- 
possible. The  present  of  experience  is  simply  a 
relation  in  self-consciousness  which  gives  the 
origin  for  all  time  measures  and  judgments, 
and  the  range  of  this  present  depends  solely 
upon  the  range  of  the  apprehending  activity 
of  the  mind.  The  present,  therefore,  is  no 
fixed  measure,  but  is  relative  to  our  mental 
power.  Epistemology  shows  that  to  introduce 
a  real  objective  succession  into  thought  would 
destroy  it.  Subject  and  predicate  must  be 
simultaneously  grasped  in  one  timeless  act, 
or  they  fall  asunder  and  thought  cannot  even 
begin.  The  present  of  experience  therefore  is 
not  in  some  independent  time,  but  is  only  a 
special  relation  in  consciousness.  The  person 
who  can  grasp  only  a  few  things  has  a  small 
present ;  one  who  can  grasp  many  things  has 
a  larger  present ;  and  one  who  can  grasp  all 
things  has  an  all-embracing  present  or  a 
changeless  now. 

This  bringing  of  the  present,  with  the  re- 
sulting time  judgment,  into  relation  to  activity 
greatly  modifies  the  subject.   Supposing  time 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL   WORLD     145 

to  be  an  independent  fact,  our  experience  is 
all  in  the  past,  for  as  soon  as  it  occurs  it  passes 
with  its  date.  In  that  case  what  we  call  our 
present  consciousness  becomes  a  memory  of 
things  which  no  longer  exist.  This  result 
would  lead  to  some  grotesque  inferences  if  it 
were  duly  analyzed.  Fortunately  the  fact  is 
otherwise.  We  call  those  things  present  which 
we  possess  in  a  certain  immediacy  of  con- 
sciousness ;  and  if  we  possessed  all  our  expe- 
riences in  a  similar  immediacy,  the  whole  ex- 
perience would  be  present  in  the  same  sense. 
There  would  still  be  a  certain  order  of  arrange- 
ment among  the  factors  of  experience  which 
could  not  arbitrarily  be  modified,  but  all  the 
members  of  the  series  would  be  equally  present 
to  consciousness.  If  now  there  were  a  being 
who  could  retain  all  the  facts  of  his  experience 
in  similar  immediacy,  he  would  have  no  past ; 
and  further,  if  such  being  were  always  in  full 
possession  of  himself  so  as  to  be  under  no  law 
of  development  and  possessing  no  unrealized 
potentialities,  he  would  also  have  no  future,  at 
least  so  far  as  his  own  existence  might  be  con- 


146  PERSONALISM 

cerned.  His  present  would  be  all-embracing, 
and  his  now  would  be  eternal. 

Taking  up  once  more  the  question,  Are  we 
in  time?  we  see  that  it  has  several  meanings 
and  the  answers  must  vary  to  correspond.  If 
it  means.  Are  things  and  events  in  a  real  time 
which  flows  on  independently  o£  them  ?  the  an- 
swer must  be.  No.  If  it  means.  Does  our  expe- 
rience have  the  temporal  form?  the  answer 
must  be.  Yes.  If  we  further  inquire  concern- 
ing the  possibility  of  transcending  temporal 
limitation,  it  is  clear  that  this  can  be  affirmed 
only  of  the  Absolute  Being,  for  only  in  Him 
do  we  find  that  complete  self-possession  which 
the  transcendence  of  time  would  mean.  In 
this  sense  temporality  is  a  mark  and  measure 
of  limitation. 

We  may  be  helped  to  some  extent  in  the 
reception  of  this  view  if  we  remember  the 
large  element  of  relativity  in  our  time  judg- 
ment in  any  case.  Without  going  deeply  into 
metaphysics,  we  can  see  that  if  our  present  time 
rate  were  modified  our  estimate  of  time  might 
be  profoundly  affected.  We  can  easily  conceive 


PHENOMENALITY  OF  PHYSICAL  WORLD    147 

the  present  rate  to  be  so  modified  as  to  make 
a  day  seem  a  thousand  years  or  a  thousand 
years  a  day.  The  life  of  an  ephemeron  might 
be  stretched  out  into  ages,  or  the  slow  motions 
of  the  hills  might  be  made  to  seem  like  the 
shifting  of  the  clouds.  Or,  if  we  should  think 
away  the  various  periodicities  of  experience, 
which  are  no  necessities  of  thought,  the 
changes  of  day  and  night,  the  movements  of 
the  seasons,  the  alternations  of  rest  and  labor, 
sleeping  and  waking,  youth  and  age,  it  is  hard 
to  tell  how  much  would  be  left  of  the  time 
judgment.  In  fact  nothing  would  be  left 
except  our  conviction  of  antecedence  and  se- 
quence among  the  factors  of  our  experience, 
and  our  estimate  of  this  would  have  in  it 
a  large  element  of  relativity.  Thus,  suppose  a 
mind  were  engaged  in  a  process  of  thought 
which  it  could  conduct  without  weariness,  it 
is  hard  to  see  what  temporality  such  a  process 
would  have ;  or  if  a  mind  were  engaged  in  any 
activity  into  which  the  element  of  weariness 
did  not  enter,  again  it  would  be  fairly  difficult 
to  tell  what  the  temporal  element  would  meau 


148  PERSONALISM 

for  the  working  mind.  The  relation  of  ante- 
cedence and  sequence  would  remain,  but  that 
would  be  only  the  form  of  the  activity  and 
would  not  implicate  the  agent  any  more  than 
the  temporal  form  of  a  romance  or  drama  would 
implicate  the  author. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  space  and  time  of 
experience  are  very  different  from  the  space 
and  time  of  the  geometrical  and  numerical 
intuition,  and  that  they  are  very  largely  rela- 
tive to  ourselves.  This  relative  element  must 
of  course  be  eliminated  from  the  divine  relation 
to  space  and  time.  Immediate  action  on  all 
things  means  spatial  omnipresence,  and  com- 
plete self-possession  and  self-realization  mean 
temporal  omnipresence.  The  Absolute  there- 
fore cannot  be  included  in  any  necessary  and 
successive  development  without  speculative  dis- 
aster ;  and  any  temporal  relations  we  may  affirm 
must  be  limited  to  the  cosmic  system.  But  if 
we  attempt  to  view  this  system  as  the  projec- 
tion of  a  corresponding  temporal  system  in 
the  divine  consciousness,  we  commit  ourselves 
to  the  infinite  regress  and  end  in  an  impossible 


PHENOMENALITY   OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     149 

dualism.  The  successive  can  exist  only  for  the 
non-successive ;  and  self-possessing,  self-suffi- 
cient intelligence  is  the  only  thing  that  can  be 
non-successive.  But  we  are  not  to  think  of  this 
Supreme  Intelligence  as  a  rigid  monotony  of 
being,  but  rather  as  the  perfect  fullness  of  life, 
without  temporal  ebb  or  flow.  Until  we  reach 
this  view,  thought  must  remain  in  unstable 
equilibrium.  The  antithesis  of  the  permanent 
and  the  changino;  is  unmediated ;  the  infinite 
regress  yawns  for  us ;  and  we  fall  back  from 
personality,  which  alone  explains  anything, 
into  some  impossible  impersonal  mechanism. 
But  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  this  non-tem- 
porality for  God  means  essentially  his  abso- 
lute self-possession  and  lack  of  our  human 
limitations  which  grow  out  of  our  dependence. 
Otherwise  we  shall  eliminate  God  from  the 
cosmic  movement  altogether,  and  put  Him  out 
of  all  relations  of  sympathy  with  the  world  of 
finite  spirits.  Then  the  last  end  would  be  worse 
than  the  first.  We  escape  this  result  by  re- 
membering that  our  problem  is  to  explain  the 
world  of  experience,  and  this  cannot  be  done  by 


150  PERSONALISM 

affirming  a  staticably  immovable  and  intellectu- 
ally monotonous  being,  but  only  by  positing 
a  self-sufficient,  self-possessing,  all-embracing 
intelligence,  which,  as  such,  is  superior  to  our 
finite  temporal  limitations. 

Now,  gathering  up  these  considerations,  we 
see  how  completely  phenomenal  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  objective  experience  is.  It  is  not  some- 
thing running  off  in  an  infinite  space  and  time 
by  itself,  but  is  rather  a  great  mental  function 
depending  upon  self-consciousness  and  the 
synthetic  activity  of  intelligence.  But  as  we 
have  said  before,  things  are  not  thereby  ren- 
dered illusions.  They  remain  still  undeniable 
factors  of  experience,  only  we  have  discovered 
that  intelligence  itself  is  the  great  constitutive 
factor  and  condition  of  this  experience.  Things 
are  still  real,  but  real  for  intelligence ;  and  those 
outlying  things  in  themselves,  the  noumena  of 
Kant's  philosophy,  or  the  unknowable  of  other 
systems,  are  to  be  looked  upon  as  fictions  of 
unclear  thought.  The  thought  sphere  is  all- 
embracing,  and  beyond  it  is  nothing.  Of  course 
this  does  not  mean  simply  the  thought  of  the 


PHENOMENALITY  OF   PHYSICAL   WORLD     151 

finite  individual,  but  cosmic  thought,  on  which 
the  cosmic  movement  itself  depends. 

A  final  word  may  be  added  respecting 
the  ontoloo-ical  character  of  mechanics  and 
mechanical  science.  Metaphysics  shows  that 
neither  matter,  force,  nor  motion  has  any  such 
existence  as  common  sense  attributes  to  them. 
Mechanics,  then,  must  be  looked  upon  as  at 
best  only  a  science  of  phenomena,  and  a  good 
part  of  it  must  be  viewed  as  of  the  nature  of 
a  device  for  calculation.  The  compositions  and 
decompositions  of  forces  and  motions,  the  an- 
alysis of  motion  into  abstract  laws,  the  break- 
ing up  of  complex  facts  into  simple  ones,  are 
to  be  looked  upon  as  devices  of  method,  and 
not  as  some  actual  process  in  reality.  They  are 
purely  relative  to  ourselves,  as  much  so  as  the 
degrees  of  the  circle,  or  the  meridians  and  par- 
allels of  the  geographer.  Considered  as  an  ab- 
stract logical  system,  the  science  of  mechanics 
is  of  course  perfectly  valid.  The  manipulation 
of  the  assumed  data  is  entirely  independent 
of  concrete  facts ;  but  when  it  sets  up  to  be  an 


152  PERSONALISM 

account  of  what  is  actually  going  on  in  space 
and  time,  we  then  have  to  point  out  the  mis- 
take. At  the  same  time  we  also  insist  upon  the 
practical  value  of  the  science,  for  as  a  matter 
of  fact  phenomena  have  laws.  They  come  to- 
gether, vary  together,  and  succeed  one  another 
according  to  rule.  These  laws  are  largely 
spatial  and  temporal,  and  admit  of  geometric 
and  numerical  expression.  Every  such  expres- 
sion is  valuable  if  it  helps  us  to  a  knowledge 
of  the  order  of  phenomena,  and  especially  if  it 
gives  any  practical  control  of  them.  As  said, 
they  are  useful  if  they  help  us;  but  consid- 
ered as  veritable  transcripts  of  reality,  they  are 
only  hypostasized  abstractions.  They  do  not 
give  us  the  essential  dynamism  of  the  system. 
The  true  efficient  causality  lies  in  a  realm  into 
which  science  as  such  has  neither  the  call  nor 
the  power  to  penetrate.  It  follows,  then,  that 
science  must  always  be  classificatory  and  de- 
scriptive. In  this  field  it  has  absolute  right  of 
way,  and  it  is  one  of  life's  most  useful  hand- 
maids ;  but  when  it  claims  to  be  more  than 
this  and   becomes  metaphysical,  it   is  pretty 


PHENOMENALITY   OF   PHYSICAL   WORLD     153 

sure  to  err  and  stray  from  the  way,  and  some- 
times it  falls  into  the  pernicious  errors  of  ma- 
terialism and  atheism. 

Of  course  on  this  view  nature  is  phenomenal, 
existing  only  in  and  for  intelligence.  Nature 
itself  is  process,  and  it  has  continuity  only  for  its 
causeand  for  the  observer.  In  some  sense,  then, 
we  may  say  that  nature  is  never  the  same  from 
one  instant  to  another,  —  as  in  a  progressive 
piece  of  music  the  performance  is  continually 
varying.  In  one  sense  it  may  be  called  the  same 
and  in  another  sense  not  the  same,  but  it  really 
has  sameness  and  continuity  only  for  the  per- 
former and  the  audience.  And  it  continually 
takes  on  the  form  which  the  musical  idea  calls 
for,  and  hence  is  continually  becoming  some- 
thing else.  This  is  the  general  view  which  we 
take  of  the  natural  system.  As  process  it  has 
continuity  only  for  its  cause  and  for  the  ob- 
server, and  the  continuity  consists  simply  in  the 
continuity  of  the  laws  according  to  which  the 
process  moves,  and  the  unity  of  purpose  which 
underlies  it.  In  the  strictest  sense  a  moving 
world  has  no  continuity  in  itself,  but  only  for 


151  PERSONALISM 

the  observing  or  producing  mind.    Apart  from 
this  mind,  nature,  supposing  it  to  exist  at  all, 
would  be  but  the  mirage  of  vanishing  phan- 
toms, each  and  all  perishing  in  the  attempt  to 
be  born.    But  granting  the  observer  and  the 
phenomenal  world,  the  only  continuity  possible 
would  be  the  continuous  validity  of  the  laws 
and  purposes  of  the  process.    New  phenomena 
as  events  would  differ  from  the  old,  however 
similar  they  might  be,  as  another  day  is  a  new 
day,  notwithstanding  the  likeness  to  old  days  ; 
but  all  the  phenomena,  new  and  old  alike,  would 
be  comprehended  in  the  same  scheme  of  law 
and  relation,  and  this  fact  constitutes  the  unity 
and  continuity  of  the  system.    It  does  not  con- 
sist, then,  in  any  rigid  identity  and  monotony 
of  the  facts  of  the  system  from  everlasting  to 
everlasting,  but  in  a  subordination  of  all,  new 
and  old  alike,  to  the  same  laws. 

In  the  next  place  it  may  be  pointed  out 
that  on  this  general  view  many  systems  may 
be  conceived  as  possible.  Our  human  world, 
when  we  look  at  it  carefully,  has  after  all  a 
large  element  of  relativity.   We  look  upon  its 


PHENOMENALITr  OF   PHYSICAL  WORLD     155 

contents  and  rightly  view  them  as  objective, 
that  is,  as  independent  of  our  human  wills. 
But  when  we  inquire  into  its  contents  we  find 
that  they  largely  consist  of  our  own  sense  life 
put  into  rational  forms,  yet  in  such  a  way 
that  if  we  should  conceive  the  sense  element 
dropped  out  it  might  be  exceedingly  difficult 
to  tell  what  would  remain.  Take  away  the 
sense  qualities  and  the  resistances  and  the 
distances,  all  of  which  are  relative  to  our- 
selves, and  we  should  find  nothing  left  that 
could  be  called  a  world  ;  and  so,  however 
much  we  may  regard  this  human  world  of 
ours  as  being  objectively  founded,  we  must 
nevertheless  query  whether  it  be  not  after  all 
a  certain  human  world  only  and  of  such  a  sort 
that  we  are  not  able  to  affirm  it  to  have  any 
existence  for  beings  who  might  be  differently 
constituted  from  ourselves  in -their  sensuous 
nature.  The  world  of  ether,  for  instance,  is 
not  adjusted  to  our  senses,  and  it  has  there- 
fore only  a  theoretical  existence  for  us.  We 
cannot  make  anything  out  of  it  for  ourselves, 
beyond  a  somewhat  obscure  assistant  of  our 


15G  PERSONALISM 

optical  equations;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
many  of  our  solid  things  seem  to  be  practi- 
cally transparent  for  various  influences  which 
we  seem  to  detect.  It  is,  therefore,  by  no 
means  an  impossible  thought  that  the  things 
which  are  solid  for  us  mig^ht  be  vacua  for 
others,  and  the  things  which  are  vacua  for  us 
might  be  solid  for  others. 

This  leads  again  to  the  surmise,  mentioned 
in  the  last  lecture,  that  there  may  be  widely 
different  systems  of  reality  for  beings  who  are 
differently  constituted,  or  for  the  same  beings 
in  different  stages  of  their  development.  Being 
in  this  world  means  nothing^  more  than  bavins: 
a  certain  form  and  type  of  experience  with  cer- 
tain familiar  conditions.  Passing  out  of  this 
world  into  another  would  mean  simply,  not 
a  transition  through  space,  but  passing  into  a 
new  form  and  type  of  experience  differently 
conditioned  from  the  present ;  and  how  many 
of  these  systems  are  possible,  or  to  what  extent 
this  change  might  go,  is  altogether  beyond 
us.  Of  course  these  many  systems  would  all 
be  objectively  founded  ;  that  is,  they  would  be 


PHENOMENALITY   OF  PHYSICAL   WORLD     157 

rooted  in  the  will  and  purpose  of  the  Creator  ; 
and  they  would  also  be  one  in  the  sense  that 
the  creative  purpose  would  embrace  them  all 
in  one  plan  ;  but  they  would  not  be  one  in  the 
sense  of  being  only  phases  or  aspects  of  one  ab- 
solute reality.  They  would  be  stages  in  God's 
unfolding  plan,  but  not  aspects  of  a  static  uni- 
verse. This  static  universe  is  a  phantom  of  ab- 
stract thought.  Apart  from  the  finite  spirit, 
the  only  reality  is  God,  and  his  progressively 
unfolding  plan  and  purpose  and  work. 

Thus  we  find  reason,  first,  for  limiting  our 
affirmations  in  any  concrete  sense  to  our  hu- 
man world ;  and,  sec6nd,  for  keeping  open  the 
door  of  possibility.  As  we  have  said  in  the 
previous  lecture,  the  possibilities  of  conscious- 
ness seem  unbounded.  We  have  here  and  now 
only  a  simple  experience,  and  it  is  permitted  to 
us  to  think  that  we  may  yet  pass  into  new  types 
of  experience  in  which  new  possibilities  of  con- 
sciousness shall  be  realized.  Of  course,  so  far 
as  positive  conception  is  concerned,  this  is 
only  a  dream.  But  yet  it  may  be  well  to  keep 
the  way  open,  for  dreaming  is  sometimes  a 


158  PERSONALISM 

useful    exercise,   provided   always  we   distin- 

iruish  what  we  dream  from  what  we  know. 


t5 


For  common  sense  the  world  of  things  is 
something  which,  for  the  present  at  least, 
exists  by  itself  without  any  assistance  from 
intelligence.  But  upon  reflection  it  appears 
that  this  world  is  a  function  of  intelligence 
in  such  a  way  that  apart  from  intelligence  it 
has  neither  existence  nor  even  meaning.  Space 
and  time  existence  and  self-conscious  existence 
exhaust  the  possibilities  for  us.  Any  other 
conception  is  purely  verbal  and  without  any 
corresponding  thought.  ^But  space  and  time 
existence  is  phenomenal  only,  existing  only 
for  and  through  intelligence.  Thus  the  claim 
of  personaHsm  is  being  estabhshed. 


IV 

MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL 
CAUSALITY 

The  world  may  be  considered  from  the  stand- 
point of  contents  and  meaning.  From  this 
point  of  view  a  world  of  rational  contents 
and  meanings  leads  us  to  affirm  a  supreme 
reason  behind  it  all  as  its  essential  source 
and  abiding  condition.  The  meanings  we  find 
are  really  there  for  intelligence,  but  they 
are  there  only  through  intelligence.  But  the 
world  must  be  regarded  also  from  the  stand- 
point of  causality.  It  is  not  merely  an  idea, 
it  is  also  a  deed.  It  is  not  merely  a  pre- 
sentation to  us  which  ends  in  itself,  it  is  also 
a  revelation  of  the  cosmic  activity  of  the 
Supreme  Will.  Some  idealists  would  seem  to 
have  held  the  former  view,  and  it  must  be 
admitted  that  as  a  psychological  possibility 
it  cannot  be  disproved ;  at  the  same  time  the 
total  impression  of  experience  is  such  that  it 


160  PERSONALISM 

cannot  be  allowed.  The  world  has  a  history 
and  an  existence  apart  from  us.  God's  cos- 
mic activity  is  not  confined  to  producing  pre- 
sentations in  us,  but  is  rather  directed  to  pro- 
ducing the  great  cosmic  order  itself,  which 
thus  has  existence  for  Him  apart  from  its 
relation  to  us.  Thus  the  world  becomes  not 
merely  a  thought,  but  a  thought  expressed  in 
act.  It  is  God's  idea ;  it  is  also  God's  deed. 
Both  elements  are  necessary  for  the  full  ex- 
pression of  our  thought  respecting  the  world. 
Of  course,  if  any  one  chooses  to  say  that  the 
world  is  only  a  presentation  in  us  and  is  no 
great  system  of  activity  apart  from  us,  no 
sufficient  logical  injunction  can  be  issued 
against  him.  But  no  injunction  would  be 
necessary ;  simple  contact  with  experience 
would  soon  dispose  of  the  notion. 

This  insight  introduces  us  to  the  question 
of  causality.  We  have  now  to  extend  our 
personal  interpretation  of  the  world  into  the 
field  of  causality,  by  showing  that  this  cat- 
egory also  vanishes  in  contradiction  until 
raised  to  the  personal  plane.  By  causality  in 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  161 
the  proper  sense  we  mean  dynamic  deter- 
mination. There  is  a  logical  determination 
of  ideas  and  relations  which  is  not  dynamic. 
Such  is  the  case  with  the  premises  which 
determine  a  conclusion,  or  with  the  sides  of 
a  figure  which  determine  the  angles.  There 
is  nothing  dynamic  here.  But  it  is  otherwise 
with  antecedents  and  consequents,  or  with 
concomitant  variations  among  things.  Here 
there  is  more  than  a  time  relation  of  co- 
existence or  sequence;  there  is  also  a  rela- 
tion of  dynamic  determination  which  we  call 
causal.    This  we  now  proceed  to  examine. 

This  notion  of  causality  on  examination 
proves  so  difficult  that  many  have  denied 
both  the  idea  and  the  fact.  This  is  generally 
due  to  some  exigency  of  system.  The  em- 
piricists have  studied  to  reduce  the  idea  to 
succession,  saying  that  by  causality  we  really 
mean  invariable  sequence,  and  if  we  think 
we  mean  more  than  this,  it  is  due,  as  Hume 
said,  to  "  a  mental  propensity  to  feign."  This 
claim,  of  course,  results  from  their  empirical 


162  PERSONALISM 

docti'ine.  According  to  that,  sensation  is  the 
only  original  mental  fact,  and  out  of  it  all 
later  conceptions  are  built.  But  as  simple 
sensation  has  in  it  no  causality,  but  is  only 
a  simple  impression  in  the  sensibility,  there 
is  no  way  of  reaching  the  idea  of  causality 
from  their  data.  Accordingly,  it  must  be  re- 
duced to  invariable  sequence,  because  their 
system  provides  for  nothing  else.  Again, 
some  rationalists  have  taken  offense  at  the 
idea  as  not  fitting  well  into  their  logical 
scheme.  Logic,  simply  as  an  order  of  inclu- 
sion and  exclusion,  or  the  relation  of*  pre- 
mises to  conclusions,  makes  no  provision  for 
dynamics,  and  equally  no  provision  for  time 
in  any  form.  Accordingly,  rationalists  of  this 
kind  have  their  own  manifest  troubles  with 
the  idea,  and  conclude  before  long  that  the 
idea  must  be  ruled  out  altogether.  Any  ra- 
tionalistic theory  must  do  this  that  seeks  to 
construct  a  theory  of  intelligence  without 
including;  the  will.  The  traditional  intuition- 
alists  also  have  seldom  been  clear  as  to  the 
form  of  the  idea,  and   have  oscillated  con- 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  163 

fusedly  between  power  and  will  and  other 
conceptions  even  more  abstract.  Because  of 
such  confusion  and  the  practical  barrenness 
of  the  question  in  the  concrete,  Comte  ad- 
vised us,  as  we  have  seen,  to  give  up  causal 
inquiry  entirely  as  useless  in  any  case.  The 
agnostics  also  recognize  the  causal  inquiry 
as  one  we  are  bound  to  make,  but  one  we 
can  never  answer.  Practically,  then,  we  must 
be  positivists,  as  we  have  said,  with,  how- 
ever, a  sense  of  omnipresent  mystery  on 
which  all  things  depend  and  to  which  we  re- 
fer whenever  we  get  into  speculative  trouble. 
Common  sense,  however,  has  no  difficulty  in 
the  case.  It  believes  in  causality  and  finds  it 
permanently  in  sense  objects,  and  there  is  no 
mystery  about  them  or  their  activities. 

We  must  agree  with  common  sense  as  to 
the  necessity  of  affirming  causality,  and  no 
theorist  has  ever  escaped  this  necessity.  Even 
those  who  deny  causality  always  assume  it  in 
one  place  or  another.  Thus  the  thoroughgoing 
empiricist,  who,  like  Hume,  reduces  causality 
to  nothingness  and  unconnected  succession, 


164  PERSONALISM 

forthwith  proceeds  to  deny  his  own  view  by 
explaining  how  our  later  ideas  arise,  or  are  pro- 
duced by  their  antecedents.  Of  course  on  that 
theory  this  is  hopelessly  inconsistent,  for  no- 
thing arises  from  anything,  or  is  due  to  any- 
thing; but  certain  things  were,  and  certain 
other  things  are;  but  in  the  sense  of  a  deter- 
mining connection  nothing  is  because  anything 
was,  but  everything  simply  is,  is  for  no  reason 
whatever.  This  inconsistency,  as  said,  is  one 
that  no  empirical  system  has  ever  succeeded 
in  avoiding,  and,  if  it  should  avoid  it,  at  once 
our  thought  system  would  become  a  curious 
sort  of  apriorism  in  which  the  influence  of 
experience  vanishes  entirely,  and  any  insight 
which  we  may  have  or  acquire  is  not  to  be 
referred  to  any  past  experience,  but  stands 
absolutely  in  its  own  right.  It  is  further  plain 
that  on  such  a  view  the  system  of  objective 
thought  would  perish  altogether,  for  in  that 
case  things,  if  real,  would  be  mutually  indif- 
ferent and  non-existent.  Events  would  be 
groundless,  and  experience  would  fall  asun- 
der into  chaos.    Our  perceptions,  too,  could 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  165 

never  be  related  to  a  real  world  in  any  way, 
and  would  be  only  groundless  phenomena  in 
the  individual  consciousness.  Thus  perception 
would  perish  in  solipsism,  and  being  itself 
would  become  only  the  momentary  and  vanish- 
ing presentation.  Nihilism  would  be  the  end. 
We  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  idea  and 
fact  of  causation  cannot  be  dispensed  with  in 
any  philosophical  system. 

At  the  same  time,  however,  it  is  manifest 
that  this  does  not  decide  the  form  of  the  idea 
and  the  location  of  the  causality.  Causality  as 
the  ground  of  cosmic  changes  is  to  be  affirmed 
beyond  any  question,  but  whether  it  'is  to  be 
located  in  the  things  of  sense  perception  or  in 
some  power  beyond  them,  is  not  yet  apparent. 
And  whether  it  is  to  be  conceived  as  imper- 
sonal power  or  as  living  active  intelligence 
also  remains  to  be  decided.  The  phenomenal- 
ity  of  the  sense  world  has  a  profound  bearing 
on  the  location  of  causaHty  and  also  on  its 
meaning. 

But  the  subject  itself  is  so  complex  that  we 
need  to  distinguish  the  factors  that  enter  into 


166  PERSONALISM 

it  lest  we  lose  ourselves  in  confusion.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  validity  of  the  idea,  we  have,  as  we 
have  just  seen,  the  question  of  form  and  loca- 
tion, and  we  have  also  a  use  of  the  word  in 
popular  speech  and  inductive  science  which 
must  be  noted  if  we  would  have  the  metaphys- 
ical problem  clearly  before  us.  If  we  divide 
we  may  conquer. 

Let  us  distinguish,  then,  first  of  all,  causal- 
ity in  the  inductive  sense  from  causality  as 
dynamic  or  productive  efficiency.  The  first 
may  be  called  causality  in  the  scientific  sense, 
the  second  causality  in  the  metaphysical  sense. 

A  large  part  of  our  speech  into  which  the 
idea  of  causality  apparently  enters  is  con- 
cerned only  with  inductive  causality,  and  this 
is  really  a  question  of  phenomenal  relations 
merely,  and  does  not  touch  the  question  of 
causality  at  all.  We  illustrate  the  distinction. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  find  that  events 
occur  under  certain  conditions.  When  the  con- 
ditions are  fulfilled  the  event  appears.  We  may 
call  the  total  group  of  conditions  the  cause, 
and  upon  occasion  we  may  call  any  one  of  the 


i 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  167 

conditions  the  cause.  The  complete  cause  and 
the  only  adequate  one  is  the  whole  group. 
Nevertheless,  if  the  group  were  given  with  the 
exception  of  one  member,  we  should  call  that 
member  the  cause  of  the  event  which  would  fol- 
low its  addition  to  the  group.  Any  event  with 
complex  antecedents  would  have  only  one  ade- 
quate cause,  but  it  might  also  be  said  to  have 
as  many  causes  as  antecedents.  Or  any  one  of 
these  might  upon  occasion  complete  the  group 
and  then  be  viewed  as  the  cause.  This  is  caus- 
ality in  the  inductive  sense.  It  has  nothing  to 
do  with  efficiency,  but  only  with  the  order  in 
which  events  occur.  In  other  words,  we  find 
when  we  look  into  experience  an  order  of  con- 
comitant chanofe  and  an  order  of  invariable 
succession.  When  we  have  change  here,  there 
is  change  yonder,  fixed  in  kind  and  in  degree. 
This  for  practical  purposes  may  be  called  the 
interaction  of  the  things,  but  it  is  really  only 
the  fixed  order  in  which  these  concomitant 
changes  occur  together.  Similarly,  in  the  case 
of  succession  we  find  that  when  certain  ante- 
cedents are  given,  certain  consequents  result. 


168  PERSONALISM 

And  this  we  may  call  causation,  again.  But, 
in  fact,  it  is  merely  the  fixed  order  in  which 
events  succeed  one  another. 

That  the  study  of  this  order,  or  the  way  in 
which  things  hang  together  in  the  order  of 
change,  is  of  the  utmost  importance,  is  plain 
upon  inspection.  The  chief  part  of  practical 
wisdom  lies  in  our  knowledge  of  it.  This  study 
must  be  pursued  inductively,  and  not  specu- 
latively. It  can  be  prosecuted  on  any  theory 
of  metaphysics,  and  need  not  concern  itself, 
except  in  the  most  general  way,  about  meta- 
physics  at  all.    The   phenomenal   conditions 
under  which  events  occur,  are  quite  distinct 
from  the  metaphysical  agency  by  which  they 
are  brought  about,  and  they  may  be  studied 
by  themselves.  By  insisting  on  this  distinction 
we  make  a  field  for  inductive  study  unembar- 
rassed by  metaphysical  scruples,  and  we  also 
rescue  the  metaphysical  problem  from  the  con- 
fusion which   results  from   confounding  the 
empirical  and  the  metaphysical  points  of  view. 
It  is  further  plain  that  this  is  all  that  is 
needed  for  science  and  practical  life.  We  may 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  169 
well  believe  that  there  is  some  hidden  causa- 
tioD  in  play,  but  we  do  not  need  it  for  practi- 
cal purposes.  Neither  do  we  observe  it.  It  is 
a  thought  problem,  and  not  a  problem  for  in- 
duction. In  electricity  we  need  not  have  any 
theory  about  the  metaphysics  of  electricity. 
We  need  only  to  know  that  certain  changes, 
which  we  call  electric,  follow  upon  certain 
other  changes  which  we  may  produce,  and 
that  they  in  turn  result  in  still  other  changes. 
When  we  know  this  law  of  succession  we  have 
all  that  we  need  for  the  practical  application 
of  what  we  call  electricity.  The  thing  itself 
may  be  never  so  mysterious,  but  whatever  it 
may  be,  we  know  in  experience  that  the  order 
of  sequence  is  such  and  such,  and  then  by 
producing  the  antecedents  we  get  the  conse- 
quents. The  power  at  work  finds  out  for  it- 
self how  to  produce  the  consequents,  but  we 
need  to  know  only  the  actual  order  and  law  of 
change.  Similarly  in  chemistry,  we  need  have 
no  theory  of  the  elements  themselves  or  no 
deep  metaphysics.  We  need  only  to  know 
that  things  which  we  call  chemical  bodies  may 


170  PERSONALISM 

be  SO  manipulated  that  certain  other  things 
will  result.  Given  this  knowledge,  we  have 
all  that  we  need  to  know  for  the  complete  de- 
velopment of  chemistry  as  a  practical  science. 
So  also  in  astronomy,  we  need  have  no  theory 
of  gravitation  in  its  metaphysical  nature.  We 
need  only  to  know  that  the  acceleration  of 
bodies  takes  place  according  to  the  formu- 
lated law  of  gravitation.  Given  this,  we  are 
able  to  construct  our  equations  and  find  the 
whereabouts  of  the  planets  without  any  theory 
whatever  of  a  metaphysical  nature.  We  may 
still  believe,  or  indeed  may  be  sure,  that  there 
is  causality  in  the  case,  but  yet  sense  does  not 
reveal  it  or  locate  it.  We  do  not  need  any 
theory  of  it  for  practical  purposes.  Without 
doubt  the  underlying  causality  will  find  out 
for  itself  how  to  do  the  work.  We  need  only 
to  know  the  rules  according  to  which  the  work 
is  done.  Milton  had  an  angel  leading  the  earth 
around  the  sun.  The  astronomer  could  get 
along  just  as  well  with  the  angel  as  with  some 
theory  of  central  forces,  provided  of  course  the 
angel  brought  his  accelerations  and  motions 


MECHANICAL   OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY   171 

under  the  law  of  the  relative  masses  and  the 
inverse  square  of  the  distance.  In  that  case 
the  astronomer  could  locate  the  angel  as  well 
as  the  planet,  and  would  be  quite  indifferent 
whether  the  planets  were  moved  by  angels  or 
by  central  forces  of  whatever  kind,  since  all 
he  needs  to  know  is  that  the  motions  take  place 
according  to  the  law  as  formulated.  Similarly 
in  mechanics  the  causal  idea  is  needless.  This 
has  long  been  thought  to  be  a  dynamic  science, 
since  one  department  of  it  bears  the  title  of 
dynamics  ;  nevertheless  it  has  been  reduced  to 
a  set  of  equations  of  relation,  from  which  all 
properly  causal  relations  have  been  eliminated. 
And  this  is  rightly  regarded  as  a  great  ad- 
vance by  the  masters  of  the  science,  so  that 
there  is  no  longer  anything  dynamic  whatever 
in  science,  whether  observational  or  theoreti- 
cal, but  simply  a  study  of  the  way  in  which 
phenomena  hang  together  in  the  observed  or- 
der of  law.  Of  course,  as  said,  this  does  not 
deny  the  idea  of  causation,  but  simply  locates 
it  in  another  realm. 


172  PERSONALISM 

We  now  pass  to  causality  in  the  sense  of 
dynamic  efficiency.  The  necessity  of  affirming 
a  causal  ground  is  stringent,  and,  as  we  have 
said,  no  theorist  has  ever  succeeded  in  long 
maintaining  a  denial  of  it.  But  it  is  not  so 
easy  to  fix  the  form  and  place  of  that  ground 
as  we  mig-ht  at  first  siofht  think.  The  tradi- 
tional  intuitionalist  has  been  very  strenuous 
in  maintaining  the  reality  of  causation,  against 
Hume  and  all  his  disciples,  but  he  has  been  a 
little  hasty  in  locating  the  causality  he  affirms, 
and  quite  unclear  as  to  its  meaning.  In  par- 
ticular, he  has  located  it  with  all  assurance 
between  the  physical  antecedent  and  the  phys- 
ical consequent.  Under  the  influence  of  his 
crude  realism,  he  has  regarded  both  of  these  as 
things  in  real  space  and  time ;  and  as  he  could 
see  nothing  else  in  the  neighborhood,  of  course 
the  antecedent  must  become  the  efficient  cause. 
Hence  this  realism  has  had  no  end  of  causes, 
of  which  the  existence  is  never  to  be  doubted. 
But  as  soon  as  we  come  to  distinguish  be- 
tween phenomenal  and  ontological  reality  and 
to  reflect  upon  the  antithesis  of  the  phenome- 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  173 

nal  and  the  real,  this  dogmatic  assurance  be- 
gins to  be  shaken.  It  is  possible  antecedent 
to  reflection  that  the  cause  is  found  in  the 
things  of  perception,  but  it  is  equally  possible 
that  these  things  are  only  phenomenal  pro- 
cesses of  an  energy  beyond  them  and  mani- 
festing itself  in  them,  in  which  case  the  caus- 
ality is  no  longer  in  them  but  elsewhere.  This 
is  the  conception  which  physicists  themselves 
now  largely  hold,  and  to  which  physical  dis- 
covery more  and  more  lends  itself.  This  view, 
it  will  be  seen,  does  not  question  the  reality 
of  causation  in  the  case.  It  only  questions  its 
location  and  the  form  in  which  we  conceive 
it.  That  in  interaction  and  causal  sequence 
we  really  see  no  causality  but  only  change 
according  to  rule  for  which  we  affirm  and  seek 
causality,  is  a  commonplace  since  the  time  of 
Hume  and  Kant.  We  may  be  sure  that  there 
is  causality  in  play,  but  whether  in  the  things 
themselves  or  beyond  them  is  not  plain.  This 
brings  us  to  consider  the  notion  of  efficient 
causality,  its  form  and  location. 

We  have  seen  in  the  previous  lecture  how 


174  PERSONALISM 

difficult  it  is  to  connect  being  at  all  with  time. 
We  there  found  that  no  being  that  has  its 
existence  successively  and  without  any  non- 
temporal  principle  can  be  said  properly  to 
exist  at  all.  It  is  a  flow  in  which  nothing  flows 
and  nothing  abides.  The  same  applies  to  caus- 
ality. In  the  universal  flow  we  have  a  causing 
in  which  nothing  causes,  and  a  continual 
changing  for  which  no  abiding  ground  can 
be  discovered.  This  view  makes  all  thought 
impossible.  There  are  no  abiding  subjects  and 
no  abiding  predicates,  but  only  a  vanishing 
razzle-dazzle  in  the  place  of  both.  In  addi- 
tion some  further  puzzles  emerge  in  the  case 
of  causality,  arising  from  the  relation  of  the 
past  to  the  present  and  the  future  in  any 
system  of  mechanical  and  realistic  thought. 

First,  it  is  plain  that  if  the  future  is  to  be 
the  product  of  the  past  or  is  to  be  explained 
by  the  past,  it  must  in  some  way  be  included 
in  the  past.  Otherwise  it  is  a  groundless  be- 
comins!";  the  law  of  connection  and  reason  van- 
ishes,  and  experience  faUs  hopelessly  asunder. 
If  we  could  exhaustively  think  the  past  without 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL   CAUSALITY  175 

finding  the  future  in  it,  in  the  sense  of  being 
necessitated  by  it,  the  future  would  be  ground- 
less ;  and  if  on  the  other  hand  we  find  the 
future  in  the  past,  we  are  at  a  loss  to  know 
just  what  this  means.  The  future  was  not  in 
the  past,  in  the  sense  of  being  present  there, 
and  yet  must  have  been  in  the  past  in  the 
sense  of  being  necessitated  by  it  or  grounded 
in  it.  Otherwise  it  could  never  have  risen  out 
of  it.  Now  how  can  these  things  be  ? 

Manifestly  this  problem  is  not  a  fictitious 
one,  but  arises  necessarily  out  of  the  attempt 
to  think  causality  in  relation  to  time.  We 
cannot  allow  the  future  to  be  independent  of 
the  past  w^ithout  dissolving  all  connection  so 
that  thought  itself  would  perish ;  but  when 
we  make  the  future  dependent  on  the  past  we 
are  bound  to  make  some  provision  in  the  past 
for  it,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  see  just  what  this 
will  be. 

Here  we  help  ourselves  by  a  word  which  in 
one  form  or  another  has  been  with  us  since 
the  time  of  Aristotle ;  and  no  more  striking 
illustration  can  be  found  of  the  ease  with 


176  PERSONALISM 

which  problems  can  be  verbally  solved  to  our 
entire  satisfaction,  though  the  solution  really 
solves  nothings.  The  word  in  the  case  is 
potentiality.  The  present  and  future  were  not 
in  the  past  actually,  but  potentially ;  and  this 
word  is  to  a  great  many  so  satisfying  that 
no  questions  remain  after  it  is  pronounced. 
And  yet  manifestly  this  solution  makes  more 
problems  than  it  solves.  This  potentiality 
must  in  some  way  have  been  an  actual  deter- 
mination of  the  real ;  otherwise  it  would  ex- 
plain nothing.  It  was,  then,  an  actuality  of 
some  sort,  and  yet  not  an  actuality  of  a  strictly 
actual  type.  But  how  to  represent  the  differ- 
ence between  a  potential  actual  and  an  actual 
actual  is  something  quite  beyond  us.  If  we 
have  recourse  to  description  and  say  that 
potential  means  only  that  future  conditions 
develop  out  of  past  conditions,  we  see  at  once 
that  "  develop  out  of "  in  a  strict  sense  has 
the  same  difficulties,  for  how  can  that  come 
out  which  was  in  no  sense  in  ?  But  if  we  mean 
only  that  new  conditions  temporally  follow  old 
conditions,  then  we  affirm    mere  succession 


MECHANICAL   OR  VOLITIONAL   CAUSALITY  177 

and  miss  the  idea  of  ground  and  connection 
altogether. 

If  our  aim  were  only  to  talk  without  very 
much  thinking,  then  probably  the  best  method 
would  be  to  write  or  pronounce  the  word 
potentiality  and  its  derivatives  with  all  pos- 
sible gravity,  and  consider  the  problem  as 
sufficiently  solved ;  but  if  in  addition  to  talk- 
ing we  also  desire  to  think,  we  might  well  in- 
quire whether  this  notion  of  potentiality  re- 
presents any  real  thought  whatever,  or  if  so, 
then  under  what  form  it  must  be  conceived. 
We  shall  do  well  to  recall  here  some  things 
said  in  our  second  lecture.  We  there  pointed 
out  that  all  these  terms  of  the  understand- 
ing in  themselves  are  only  forms  of  thought 
which  leave  it  entirely  undecided  whether  there 
be  any  concrete  reality  corresponding  to  them, 
and  we  said  that  they  have  application  only  as 
we  find  some  concrete  experience  which  illus- 
trates them.  Otherwise  they  are  abstractions 
without  any  real  content,  or  they  are  formal 
principles  which  float  in  the  air  until  some 
concrete  experience  tells  us  what  their  actual 


178  PERSONALISM 

meaning  is.  Now  in  the  case  of  potentiality 
it  is  clear  that  when  we  are  thinking  on  this 
problem  of  the  relation  of  past  and  future, 
we  must  provide  for  this  fact  which  we  name 
potentiality.  But  when  we  thus  name  it  we 
have  not  yet  found  the  form  under  which  it 
is  to  be  conceived,  and  the  further  fact  is  that 
on  the  impersonal  plane  nothing  whatever  can 
be  found  which  shows  us  that  the  fact  is  in 
any  way  thinkable.  There  is  nothing  whatever 
in  experience  which  indicates  to  us  that  the 
problem  contained  in  the  word  admits  of  any 
solution,  and  it  is  not  until  we  bring  the  mat- 
ter up  from  the  plane  of  necessity  and  imper- 
sonal causation  to  the  personal  plane  that  we 
get  any  hint  that  the  problem  can  be  solved 
at  all.  Potentiality  is  a  clear  notion  only  on 
the  plane  of  freedom.  Here  it  means  the  self- 
determination  of  the  free  agent.  It  is  the  fact 
that  the  free  agent  can  do  or  not  do,  that  he 
has  therefore  various  possibilities  open  to  him, 
and  these  we  may  speak  of  as  potentialities. 
Here  the  problem  is  solved  in  experience,  and 
we  find  a  possible  and  permissible  meaning  to 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  179 

the  words.  But  on  the  plane  of  the  necessary 
it  is  pure  opacity.  It  must  be  something  which  is 
at  once  real  and  not  real,  actual  and  not  actual. 
Unless  we  can  master  this,  the  alternative  is  to 
refer  all  motion,  progress,  development,  evolu- 
tion, to  a  supreme  self-determination  which 
ever  lives  and  ever  founds  the  order  of  things. 
In  that  case  the  past  is  not  potential  of  the 
future,  any  more  than  the  summer  is  poten- 
tial of  the  winter,  or  the  setting  of  the  sun  is 
potential  of  the  rising  of  the  moon;  but  both 
past  and  future  are  phases  of  a  movement 
which  abuts  on  freedom,  and  of  which  the  suc- 
cessive phases  are  but  implications  and  mani- 
festations of  the  one  thought  which  is  the  law 
and  meaning  of  the  whole.  This  is  a  meaning 
of  potentiality  that  finds  illustration  in  experi- 
ence, and  is  understood  through  experience. 
In  any  other  sense  it  eludes  us  altogether,  and 
only  expresses  a  problem  for  which  on  the  im- 
personal plane  we  can  find  no  solution. 

In  popular  thought  mechanical   and  voli- 
tional causality  are  differentiated  by  their  re- 


180  PERSONALISM 

lation  to  time.  The  former  is  pushed  out  of 
the  past,  the  latter  looks  toward  the  future. 
This  is  essentially  the  form  of  intellectual 
causality,  the  great  mark  of  which  is  the  for- 
ward look.  It  is  causality  self-moving  toward 
ends  which  lie  before ;  hence,  it  is  called  final 
causality,  or  a  causality  which  looks  toward 
ends.  In  mechanical  causality  what  was  deter- 
mines what  is;  in  volitional  causality  free  in- 
telligence chooses  things  which  are  to  be  and 
works  for  their  realization.  It  is  between  these 
conceptions  that  we  have  to  decide. 

But  before  proceeding  to  the  discussion  we 
point  out  in  passing  that  the  inductive  argu- 
ment for  intelligence  in  the  power  behind 
phenomena  rests  chiefly  on  this  forward  look 
on  things.  Mechanical  causality  in  itself  is  a 
resultant  of  past  conditions,  and  has  no  refer- 
ence to  future  ends.  Everything  is  product 
and  nothing  is  purpose.  But  in  final  causality 
the  movement  is  toward  ends  which  are  to  be 
reahzed,  so  that  the  present  is  determined  with 
reference  to  the  future,  and  this  is  possible 
only  as  causality  becomes  free  and  purposive. 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  181 

The  future  as  such  cannot  determine  the 
present.  This  is  possible  only  as  the  future 
results  exist  as  present  conceptions  in  con- 
sciousness for  the  realization  of  which  intelli- 
gence is  acting.  Apart  from  intelligence  final 
causality  is  literally  preposterous,  as  Spinoza 
said ;  for  it  turns  the  effect  into  a  cause  of 
itself.  It  is  plain,  too,  that  this  inductive  ar- 
guriient  depends  solely  upon  the  relation  of 
present  and  future,  and  not  upon  any  details 
of  method.  Historically  the  argument  has 
largely  proceeded  upon  some  particular  con- 
ception of  method,  and  thus  has  seemed  weak 
or  worthless  when  the  conception  of  method 
changed.  Hence  the  doctrine  of  evolution  has 
seemed  to  many  to  weaken  the  argument  for 
purpose  in  nature.  In  fact,  however,  for  all 
who  see  in  the  antecedent  stages  of  evolution 
a  preparation  for  things  to  come,  or  the  earlier 
phases  of  a  progressive  movement,  the  facts 
of  evolution  become  the  most  impressive  of  all 
the  inductive  arguments  for  purpose  in  the 
world ;  for  in  that  case  the  entire  movement 
in  its  great  outlines  has  the  forward  look,  and 


182  PERSONALISM 

is  thereby  marked  as  rooting  in  the  causality  of 
intellio-ence.  And  the  aro^ument  becomes  more 
impressive  than  the  argument  from  detailed 
marks  of  special  contrivance,  by  as  much  as  its 
boundless  range  in  space  and  time  transcends 
the  petty  extensions  and  durations  of  the  tra- 
ditional discussion.  We  return  now  to  the  main 
question  of  mechanical  or  volitional  causality. 
Mechanical  causality  for  spontaneous 
thought  is  the  great  type.  Such  thought  is 
busy  mainly  with  material  and  mechanical  ob- 
jects, and  hence  its  conception  of  causality 
necessarily  takes  on  a  material  and  mechanical 
form.  Thus  mechanical  causation  tends  to  be- 
come the  great  type,  if  not  the  only  type,  of 
causation,  while  volitional  causality  is  looked 
upon  as  something  portentous  and  anomalous. 
And  if  it  be  allowed  at  all,  the  attempt  is  often 
made  by  some  doctrine  of  determinism,  or  voli- 
tional necessity,  to  reduce  it  to  the  mechanical 
form.  This  conception  is  manifestly  dependent 
on  the  notion  of  an  independently  existent 
time,  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  supreme 
law  of  all  other  existence.  The  things  that 


MECHANICAL   OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  183 

were,  were  the  causes  of  the  things  that  are ; 
and  all  causality  is  from  the  past  to  the  future, 
as  a  kind  of  universal  parallelogram  of  forces 
according  to  which  antecedents  determine 
their  consequents,  and  so  the  stream  goes  on 
unceasingly.  When  this  is  connected  with  the 
space  form,  material  and  mechanical  causation 
seems  to  be  the  only  possible  type  of  causality. 
Thus  the  great  space  and  time  phantoms  are 
seen  to  be  the  source  of  the  mechanical  con- 
ception. But  when  we  recall  the  ideality  of 
space  and  time,  this  view  at  once  begins  to  lose 
its  self -evidence.  Indeed,  this  ideality  reduces 
every  doctrine  of  mechanism  to  phenomenal 
significance,  and  deprives  it  of  all  claim  to 
represent  the  essential  dynamics  of  the  world. 
Its  value  Kes  entirely  in  its  practical  conven- 
ience, and  it  must  never  be  allowed  to  intimi- 
date us  into  supposing  that  it  is  the  real  fact 
of  existence.  We  might,  then,  set  the  mechan- 
ical doctrine  aside  without  further  discussion; 
but  there  are  certain  confusions  in  the  doc- 
trine, even  on  its  own  temporal  basis,  which 
it  is  worth  while  to  point  out.  In  this  way  we 


184  PERSONALISM 

may  succeed  in  loosening  our  dogmatic  faith 
in  the  chimera. 

A  Httle  reflection  soon  reveals  that  this  me- 
chanical causality  is  far  from  being  the  easy 
notion  it  at  first  sight  seems  to  be.  By  its  es- 
sential nature  it  is  supposed  to  be  conditioned 
by  its  antecedents.  The  effect  cannot  be  given 
until  the  antecedents  are  given,  and  when 
they  are  given  it  is  given.  But  this  involves  a 
pair  of  contradictions,  neither  of  which  can  be 
removed.  In  such  a  scheme,  and  assuming  the 
independent  reality  of  time,  the  whole  series 
of  causal  events  must  coexist  or  run  off  in  the 
same  instant.  For  unless  we  make  the  gro- 
tesque assumption  that  empty  time  does  some- 
thing, we  must  allow  that  when  the  dynamic 
conditions  are  completed  the  effect  is  there 
without  delay.  Hence  in  the  mechanico-tem- 
poral  series,  as  soon  as  the  dynamic  antece- 
dents are  given  the  consequents  are  given,  and 
their  consequents  in  turn  are  given,  and  so  on 
to  the  end  of  the  series,  so  that  the  beginning 
and  the  end  temporally  coincide.  This  is  one 
member  of  the  antinomy. 


MECHANICAL   OR  VOLITIONAL   CAUSALITY   185 

The  other  member  consists  in  the  infinite 
regress  which  this  conception  of  causality  in- 
volves. On  this  view  everything  refers  to  some- 
thing behind  it,  and  so  on  in  endless  regress. 
Hence  the  real  ground  of  everything  lies  be- 
yond and  below  the  horizon  and  can  never 
be  reached.  Thus  the  law  of  causation  itself 
disappears.  There  can  be  no  causality  on  this 
view  without  a  first,  and  on  the  other  hand 
this  view  forbids  us  ever  to  find  a  first.  There 
can  be  no  first  moment  in  time,  for  back  of 
any  moment  there  is  an  indefinite  number 
of  moments.  Likewise  there  can  be  no  first  in 
a  mechanical  order  of  conditioned  causality, 
without  assuming  something  non-mechanical 
beyond  it.  The  causal  idea  demands  com- 
pleteness in  the  series  of  conditions,  and  it 
never  can  be  completed  on  the  mechanical 
plane.  No  first  day  or  first  night  can  be  found 
by  any  regress  along  the  series  of  days  and 
nights  as  such,  for  each  day  has  a  preceding 
night  and  each  night  a  preceding  day. 

In  the  very  old  days,  when  animals  had  the 
gift  of  speech,  the  cat  waited  on  the  owl  to 


186  PERSONALISM 

know  what  philosophy  deals  with.  The  owl 
replied,  "Philosophy  considers  such  questions 
as  this  :  Which  was  first,  the  hen  or  the  egg?'' 
"  Why,"  said  the  cat,  "  that  question  admits 
o£  no  answer."  "  Of  course  not,"  rejoined  the 
owl,  "and  for  that  I  give  the  gods  very  great 
thanks.  For  only  consider  :  what  would  we 
philosophers  have  to  do  if  the  question  were 
settled?" 

This  fable  well  illustrates  the  impossibility 
of  reaching  a  first  by  any  regress  in  a  condi- 
tioned series,  or  a  series  of  conditioned  mem- 
bers. We  can  indeed  describe  the  temporal 
relations  of  the  hens  and  eggs,  and  this  serves 
all  practical  purposes;  but  the  hen-and-egg 
series  can  never  be  explained  in  this  way.  Re- 
gress, however  long  continued,  does  not  even 
tend  to  explain  it.  It  is  like  seeking  to  sup- 
port a  chain  by  adding  extra  links  to  the  upper 
end,  yet  without  providing  any  hook  for  the 
support  of  the  whole.  This  is  the  second 
member  of  the  antinomy. 

But  here  it  may  occur  to  us  that  there  is 
DO  more  need  to  affirm  a  dynamic  first  than 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  187 

there  is  to  affirm  a  temporal  first ;  and  since 
time  itself  is  unbegun,  causality  also  may  be 
unbeoun.  This  calls  attention  to  a  curious 
difficulty  in  the  notion  of  an  independently 
existing  time.  There  certainly  can  be  no  first 
in  an  independent  time,  for  back  of  any  mo- 
ment whatever  in  a  temporal  series  an  indefi- 
nite number  of  earlier  moments  could  be  found. 
But  if  there  be  no  real  first  there  is  equally 
no  real  second,  or  any  other  number,  with  the 
result  that  all  finite  time  measures  are  purely 
relative  and  have  no  significance  in  the  infini- 
tude of  time.  The  conclusion  would  be  that 
the  time  of  experience  is  relative  to  experience 
only,  and  we  could  never  relate  it  to  the  infinite 
time  of  abstraction.  We  have  simply  another 
argument  for  the  phenomenality  of  experienced 
time,  and  the  non-existence  of  this  self-exist- 
ent time,  which  is  but  the  phantom  shadow 
of  the  temporal  process  abstracted  from  expe- 
rience. Not  in  this  way  can  we  escape  the  ne- 
cessity of  a  dynamic  first,  that  is,  a  dynamic 
act  which  refers  us  to  no  other.  In  this  sense 
every  truly  causal  act  is  a  dynamic  first.    The 


188  PERSONALISM 

true  cause  is  never  to  be  sought  at  the  unattain- 
able beginning  of  an  infinite  series,  but  is  rather 
immanent  throughout  the  series,  as  the  living 
power  by  which  all  things  exist  and  all  events 
come  to  pass ;  and  this  cause  is  as  near  and  as 
active  in  the  last  as  in  the  first. 

To  the  infinite  regress,  then,  and  the  result- 
ing failure  of  the  causal  idea  we  are  certainly 
shut  up  if  we  adopt  a  temporal  and  linear  con- 
ception of  the  hen-and-egg  type.  The  hen-and- 
egg  series  demands  explanation  as  much  as 
any  particular  hen  or  egg  ;  and  no  particular 
hen  or  egg  is  really  explained  until  the  hen- 
and-egg  series  is  also  accounted  for  —  which 
it  never  can  be  by  any  endless  regress.  This 
is  so  manifest  that  the  general  effort  has  been 
to  exchange  the  linear  causality  for  an  abid- 
ing cause,  which  was  and  is  and  is  to  come, 
and  this  cause  abides  from  asfe  to  asre,  so  that 
we  have  no  succession  of  causes,  but  only  one 
cause  throughout  the  series  of  effects.  We 
seem  in  this  way  to  escape  the  infinite  regress, 
also,  as  we  have  only  to  refer  effects  to  this 
cause  without  further  specification.    We  may 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY   189 

also  drop  the  word  mechanical,  which  is  a 
little  too  susfSfestive  of  the  coarse  machines 
of  human  contrivance  to  apply  to  this  invis- 
ible and  unpicturable  energy;  and  instead  of 
it  let  us  rather  speak  of  necessary  causality  in 
distinction  from  volitional  causality.  .Thus  we 
find  the  fixed  and  abiding  one  in  the  chang- 
ing and  passing  many. 

This  looks  well  until  examined,  and  it  cer- 
tainly sounds  better  than  the  previous  putting; 
but  it  really  shows  good  intentions  rather  than 
insight  into  the  problem.  In  fact,  we  have  in 
it  once  more  the  attempt  of  common  sense 
to  find  something  which  abides  through  the 
world  of  chang-e.  It  allows  that  a  succession 
of  causes  as  distinct  things  would  never  do, 
but  it  is  quite  clear  that  an  impersonal  cause 
might  well  exist  as  one  and  the  same  from 
everlasting  to  everlasting,  and  produce  a  great 
variety  of  effects  without  losing  its  proper 
identity.  There  is  in  the  view,  however,  the 
common-sense  oversight  of  the  dialectic  in  the 
metaphysics  of  change  and  identity.  In  discuss- 
ing that  problem,  we  found  in  the  last  lecture 


190  PERSONALISM 

that  on  the  impersonal  plane  no  identity  can 
be  discovered.  We  came  to  the  phantasmagoric 
flux  of  Heraclitus,  which  is  the  destruction  of 
both  thought  and  thing.  We  also  saw  the 
impossibility  of  making  any  use  of  the  world 
of  rigid  identity,  in  case  we  found  it.  In  the 
view  before  us  all  this  is  overlooked,  and  it 
is  assumed  as  a  matter  of  course  that  both 
change  and  identity  can  be  united  in  the 
impersonal.  But  when  this  is  seen  to  be  im- 
possible, we  no  longer  have  one  cause  or  one 
being,  or  indeed  ^ny  cause  or  being  whatever, 
but  simply  a  causing  in  which  nothing  causes 
and  nothing  is  caused,  and  a  movement  in 
which  nothing  moves  and  nothing  is  moved. 
We  have  a  kind  of  metaphysical  vermiform 
peristalsis,  or  peristaltism,  in  which  nothing 
worms  itself  along  from  nothing  to  nothing, 
and  is  mistaken  for  something  on  the  way.  A 
moving  body  without  continuity  and  identity 
would  not  be  a  moving  body,  but  only  a  suc- 
cession of  optical  phenomena  ;  and  if  there 
were  no  observer,  not  even  this  could  exist. 
The  impersonal  changing  cause  is  in  this  case. 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY   191 

Its  unity  and  identity  are  not  in  the  flow  it- 
self, but  in  the  observing  mind ;  and  when  that 
is  removed,  there  is  nothing  articulate  left.  In 
addition,  it  is  clear  that  the  view  does  not 
escape  the  infinite  regress  if  it  assumes  that 
this  causing  is  in  time  ;  for  instead  of  an  infi- 
nite series  of  conditioned  causes,  we  have  an 
infinite  series  of  conditioned  causings,  each  of 
which  points  to  an  earlier  causing,  —  and  we 
are  no  better  off  than  before. 

All  that  we  bring  away  from  these  crude 
notions  is  the  conviction  that  causality  must 
be  af&rmed,  but  that  it  cannot  be  conceived  in 
the  mechanical  and  temporal  form.  The  sug- 
gestions of  uncritical  common  sense  prove  to 
be  only  phrases  which  contain  a  problem  rather 
than  a  real  solution.  In  every  mechanical  doc- 
trine of  causality  every  present  change  finds 
its  causality  in  an  infinite  regress,  which  can 
never  be  completed  and  in  which  thought 
perishes.  In  volitional  causality  we  trace  the 
act  to  the  personal  purpose  and  volition,  and 
there  the  regress  ceases. 

Another  difficulty  in  the  mechanical  notion 


192  PERSONALISM 

is  its  tautology.  Whenever  we  think  of  caus- 
ality on  the  plane  of  mechanical  necessity,  we 
find  ourselves  forthwith  reduced  to  motions 
which  contain  no  progress.  What  may  be 
called  the  law  of  the  logical  equivalence  of 
cause  and  effect  in  all  necessary  schemes  of 
thought  at  once  confronts  us.  The  cause 
which  is  to  explain  an  effect  in  such  a  system 
must  always  be  the  cause  which  in  principle 
contains  the  effect.  If  it  did  not  contain  it,  it 
would  not  explain  it.  But  if,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  contains  it,  then  the  explanation  is 
tautologous,  because  the  explanation  itself 
contains  the  very  fact  to  be  explained.  If  we 
could  think  the  cause  exhaustively  without 
finding  the  effect  provided  for  in  it,  it  would 
not  explain  the  effect ;  but  if  we  find  the  effect 
already  provided  for  in  the  cause,  then  the 
effect  is  indeed  explained,  because  the  explain- 
ing cause  already  contains  it.  This  is  the 
hopeless  deadlock  of  all  mechanical  thinking 
along  causal  lines,  and  it  can  never  be  escaped 
by  any  device  of  logic  whatever.  Thus  we  see 
that  the  net  result  of  all  such  thinking  is  tau- 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  193 

tology  and  infinite  regress.  The  logical  equi- 
valence of  cause  and  effect  in  such  a  scheme 
takes  all  progress  out  of  it.  In  such  a  system 
there  is  nothing  new,  but  only  an  unfolding  of 
alleged  eternal  potentialities,  and  the  notion 
of  these  potentialities  we  have  already  seen  to 
be  hopelessly  obscure  and  contradictory.  Thus 
once  more  the  notion  of  mechanical  causality 
shows  itself  as  entirely  unmanageable.  If  this 
is  what  causality  means  we  might  as  well  be- 
come positivists  at  once,  for  surely  there  is  no 
more  barren  business  conceivable  than  this. 
Time  and  strength  are  wasted,  and  expenses 
are  not  paid. 

And  this  is  not  all,  for  a  further  difficulty 
emerges.  No  change  of  any  kind  is  provided 
for  in  such  a  scheme.  If  the  connection  of 
antecedent  and  consequent  is  purely  logical, 
the  premises  and  conclusion  must  coexist,  and 
all  things  are  there  at  once  and  forever.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  there  is  some  dynamic  prin- 
ciple which  passes  from  form  to  form,  we  can- 
not explain  this  without  making  the  change 
all-inclusive ;  and  then  all  things  flow.    If  we 


194  PERSONALISM 

think  to  rest  the  change  on  necessity,  we  are 
not  helped,  for  the  necessity  of  change  means 
a  changing  necessity.  If  the  necessity  re- 
mained rigidly  the  same  throughout  the  series, 
no  reason  for  any  change  whatever  could  be 
found.  The  change,  then,  must  penetrate  into 
the  necessity  itself,  and  a  changing  necessity 
means  another  necessity,  and  once  more  our 
unity  breaks  up  into  indefinite  plurality.  There 
is  no  way  of  connecting  the  multitudinous  ne- 
cessities with  any  principle  that  unites  them 
and  makes  them  possible,  or  prescribes  the  order 
of  their  manifestation.  In  some  way  the  many 
must  be  referred  to  the  one,  and  change  must  be 
referred  to  the  changeless,  but  this  can  never 
be  done  on  the  mechanical  and  impersonal 
plane.  The  only  one  we  can  find  is  the  unitary 
intelligence,  and  the  only  changeless  we  can 
find  is  the  self-equal  intelligence.  All  other 
unities  and  identities  vanish  into  plurality  and 
the  Heraclitic  flow.  There  is,  then,  no  one 
changeless  necessity  which  explains  all  things, 
but  an  infinitude  of  necessities  with  nothing 
to  coordinate  them. 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  195 

And  here  again  it  may  be  well  to  remind 
ourselves  once  more  that  this  is  not  a  ques- 
tion of  inductive  science  or  common-sense 
experience,  but  solely  of  consistent  thinking. 
Nothing  that  we  have  said  has  any  bearing  on 
the  study  of  succession  and  concomitant  vari- 
ation, which  is  the  great  field  of  practical  sci- 
ence. Neither  does  it  concern  the  fact  of  caus- 
ation, but  only  its  form  and  nature.  Unless 
we  bear  this  constantly  in  mind,  we  might 
think  it  sufficient  to  say  causality  is  there  any- 
way, and  hence  our  objections  are  unavailing. 
Diogenes,  in  reply  to  Plato's  arguments  against 
motion,  simply  got  up  and  walked.  So  here  we 
may  say  the  problem  is  solved  by  walking.  But 
the  answer  to  this  is  that  the  problem  is  not 
thus  solved,  for  it  is  really  not  the  question 
whether  there  be  causality,  but  how  we  shall 
conceive  it.  It  is  a  question  between  two  com- 
peting conceptions  of  causality,  the  mechanical 
or  the  volitional.  As  we  have  so  often  said, 
only  the  order  of  change  is  given.  Its  causal 
explanation  is  a  problem  for  thought,  and  the 
explanation  must  be  self-consistent.    There  is 


196  PERSONALISM 

no  doubt  that  causality  is  there,  but  liow  to 
conceive  it  is  the  problem.  Shall  we  view  it 
as  mechanical  or  volitional,  necessary  or  free, 
blind  or  seeing  ?  These  are  questions  for 
thought  to  solve,  and  the  value  of  competing 
solutions  is  to  be  found  in  their  adequacy  to 
the  facts  and  to  the  demands  of  our  reason. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  way  of  mechanical 
causality  is  hard.  Instead  of  being  a  manifest 
intuition,  as  at  first  seemed  to  be  the  case,  it 
rather  turns  out  to  be  a  perfect  nest  of  contra- 
dictions and  impossibilities.  Volitional  caus- 
ality is  the  only  causality  of  which  we  have 
experience.  Of  mechanical  causation  we  have 
no  experience  whatever,  and  when  we  attempt 
to  think  it  and  note  its  implications  and  the 
difficulties  into  which  it  brings  us  in  connec- 
tion with  the  problem  of  time,  the  infinite  re- 
gress, the  barren  tautology,  and  the  Heraclitic 
flux,  we  see  that  the  notion  itself  is  so  full 
of  difficulties  as  to  be  worthless,  if  it  were 
otherwise  possible.  But  with  volitional  caus- 
ality the  case  is  different.    Here  we  have  the 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  197 

causality  of  conscious  intelligence  which  pos- 
sesses and  directs  itself.  Here  we  have  a 
cause  that  can  make  new  departures  without 
losing  itself  in  the  infinite  regress,  —  a  cause 
that  was  and  that  also  is,  —  a  cause  that  does 
not  lie  temporally  behind  the  process,  but  is 
immanent  in  the  process  as  the  abiding  power 
on  which  it  forever  depends.  Here  is  a  unity 
which  in  the  oneness  of  consciousness  can 
posit  plurality  and  remain  unity  still.  Here  is 
an  abiding  power  which  can  form  plans,  fore- 
see ends,  and  direct  itself  for  their  realization. 
Here  is  a  cause  which  in  the  self-equality 
of  intelligence  remains  identical  across  the 
changes  which  it  originates  and  directs.  And 
'  this  is  the  only  conception  that  meets  the  de- 
mands of  the  causal  idea.  It  is  not  only  the 
only  conception  of  which  we  have  any  con- 
crete experience,  and  the  only  one,  therefore, 
of  which  we  can  be  sure  that  it  represents  any 
actuality  at  all,  but  it  is  the  only  one  that  does 
not  shatter  on  its  own  inherent  inconsistency 
and  the  only  one  that  is  really  compatible  with 
intelligence  itself ;  for,  as  will  appear  later  on, 


198  PERSONALISM 

will  is  an  important  and  essential  function  in 
what  we  call  intellect.  Intellect,  conceived 
simply  as  a  logical  mechanism  of  ideas,  is 
something  that  is  totally  incompatible  with 
rational  thought,  and  lands  us  in  the  midst  of 
antinomies  worse  than  those  of  the  Kantian 
system. 

This  brings  us  to  the  question  of  freedom, 
a  matter  which  has  been  very  much  misunder- 
stood by  most  speculators.  These  have  dis- 
cussed it  from  the  standpoint  of  the  reality  of 
time,  and  with  various  mechanical  analogies 
and  metaphors  in  their  minds,  and  without 
any  suspicion  of  the  emptiness  of  mechani- 
cal causality  in  general.  Motives  have  been' 
treated  as  mechanical  forces  of  one  kind  or 
another,  which  may  be  quantitatively  compared 
on  a  dynamic  scale  and  their  resultant  deter- 
mined. The  great  time  phantom  has  lent  its 
misleading  suggestions  further  to  confuse  the 
matter,  and  so  it  has  come  to  be  an  accepted 
dogma  with  many  that  freedom  itself  is  a  con- 
siderable affront  to  reason,  so  much  so  that  the 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY   199 

pure  reason  left  to  itself  is  always  determinis- 
tic ;  and  belief  in  freedom,  if  held  at  all,  is 
maintained  only  for  moral  or  sentimental  rea- 
sons. This,  however,  is  a  fundamental  miscon- 
ception, as  we  have  seen  and  shall  further  see. 
Freedom  itself  has  the  deepest  speculative  sig- 
nificance for  reason  and  science,  as  well  as  for 
morals  and  religion. 

Concrete  problems  can  never  be  safely  con- 
sidered in  the  abstract.  Many  a  proposition  may 
seem  self-evident  when  abstractly  taken,  which 
looks  very  different  when  put  into  concrete  form. 
And  many  ideas  are  mutually  contradictory 
when  abstractly  compared,  which  harmonize 
admirably  when  concretely  realized.  This  is  es- 
pecially the  case  with  the  doctrine  of  freedom. 
The  difficulties  in  it  have  largely  arisen  from 
an  abstract  consideration,  which  puts  asunder 
things  that  belong  together.  Our  first  care, 
then,  must  be  to  decide  what  we  mean  by  free- 
dom in  the  concrete.  If  we  succeed  in  vindi- 
cating a  real  freedom,  we  may  dispense  with 
the  abstract  freedom  of  the  closet  speculator. 

By  freedom  in  our  human  life  we  mean  the 


200  PERSONALISM 

power  of  self-direction,  the  power  to  form 
plans,  purposes,  ideals,  and  to  work  for  their 
realization.  We  do  not  mean  an  abstract  free- 
dom existing  by  itself  without  relation  to  in- 
telligence or  desire,  but  simply  this  power  of 
self-direction  in  living  men  and  women.  Ab- 
stract freedom  is  realized  only  as  one  aspect  of 
actual  life,  and  must  always  be  discussed  in  its 
concrete  sig'nificance. 

With  this  understanding  of  what  freedom 
is,  we  recur  to  its  speculative  significance.  This 
appears  first  in  its  bearing  on  the  problem  of 
error.  That  problem  lies  in  this  fact.  First,  it 
is  plain  that  unless  our  faculties  are  essentially 
truthful,  there  is  an  end  to  all  trustworthy 
thinking;  but,  secondly,  it  is  equally  plain 
that  a  large  part  of  thought  and  belief  is  er- 
roneous ;  hence  the  question  arises  as  a  matter 
of  life  and  death  for  rational  thought,  how 
to  reconcile  the  existence  of  error  with  faith 
in  the  essential  truthfulness  of  our  faculties. 
Freedom  is  the  only  solution  which  does  not 
wreck  reason  itself.  If  our  faculties  are  es- 
sentially truthful  and  trustworthy,  but  may  be 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL   CAUSALITY  201 

carelessly  used  or  willfully  misused,  then  we  can 
understand  how  error  should  arise  without 
compromising  the  truthfulness  of  our  faculties. 
But  on  any  other  basis  error  becomes  cosmic 
and  necessary,  and  reason  is  overwhelmed  in 
skepticism. 

This  matter  has  never  been  adequately  con- 
sidered by  necessitarians,  or  generally  by  phi- 
losophers. They  have  been  content  to  take 
knowledge  for  granted,  and  have  failed  to  see 
that  any  philosophic  theory  must  develop  its 
doctrine  of  knowledge  out  of  its  own  resources, 
and  to  see  that  many  theories  are  suicidal  and 
therefore  are  fatal  to  the  first  condition  of  all 
theorizing,  —  trust  in  reason  itself.  Such  is 
the  case  with  all  materialistic,  atheistic,  neces- 
sitarian, and  mechanical  schemes  of  thinking 
in  general.  In  any  such  system  the  distinction 
between  truth  and  error  disappears,  and  one 
notion  is  as  good  as  another  while  it  lasts, 
since  all  alike  are  equally  necessary.  Hence 
any  one  wishing  to  find  his  way  into  the  prob- 
lem of  freedom  will  do  well  to  consider  first  of 
all  the  relation  of  freedom  to  intelligence  itself, 


202  PERSONALISM 

and  the  collaj)se  of  rationality  involved  in  the 
system  of  necessity. 

Necessity,  on  the  other  hand,  is  commonly 
supposed  to  be  a  perfectly  clear  and  self-evident 
notion.  This  view  is  pretty  sure  to  arise  in  the 
early  stages  of  reflection,  but  deeper  study  dis- 
pels it.  The  only  clear  conception  we  have  of 
necessity  is  rational  necessity,  that  is,  the  neces- 
sity which  attaches  to  the  relation  of  ideas,  as 
in  logic  and  mathematics ;  but  this  necessity  is 
not  found  in  experience,  whether  of  the  inner 
or  outer  world.  The  elements  of  experience 
and  their  connections  are  all  contingent  as  far 
as  rational  necessity  goes ;  that  is,  we  cannot 
deduce  them  from  ideas  or  connect  them  by  any 
rational  bond.  The  necessity,  then,  if  there  be 
any,  is  metaphysical,  and  this  logic  finds  to  be 
an  exceedingly  obscure  notion,  and  one  which 
eludes  any  positive  conception.  It  can  be  nei- 
ther sensuously  cognized  nor  rationally  appre- 
hended, and  the  more  we  wrestle  with  the  idea 
the  worse  our  puzzle  becomes.  We  have  already 
found  it  impossible  to  do  anything  with  the 
notion  without  adding  to  it  the  further  notion 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY    203 

of  potentiality,  and  what  a  necessary  metaphys- 
ical potentiality  might  be  we  have  found  it  im- 
possible to  say.  It  must  be  in  some  sense  an  ac- 
tuality, or  it  could  never  affect  reality ;  and  yet 
it  cannot  be  an  actual  actuality  without  ante- 
dating itself.  We  are  driven,  then ,  to  distinguish 
two  kinds  of  actuality,  potential  and  actual, 
without,  however,  the  least  shadow  of  insight 
into  the  distinction  between  them ;  and  in  order 
to  do  this  we  have  to  make  causality  temporal, 
which  is  impossible.  Non-temporal  causality, 
on  the  other  hand,  would  be  motionless  on  the 
impersonal  plane,  and  would  lead  to  nothing. 
Thus  the  doctrine  of  necessity  finds  itself  in 
unstable  equilibrium,  between  the  groundless 
becoming  of  Hume's  doctrine,  in  which  events 
succeed  one  another  without  having  any  inner 
ground  or  connection,  and  a  doctrine  of  free- 
dom, in  which  the  ground  of  connection  and 
progress  is  to  be  found,  not  in  any  unman- 
ageable metaphysical  bond  which  defies  all  un- 
derstanding, but  in  the  ever-present  freedom 
which  posits  events  in  a  certain  order  and  thus 
forever  administers  all  that  we  mean  by  the 


204  PERSONALISM 

system  of  law,  and  founds  all  that  we  mean  by 
necessity  in  things.^  In  addition,  we  recall  the 
overthrow  of  rationality  involved  in  all  neces- 
sary systems. 

Some  traditional  misunderstandings  con- 
cernino;  the  meaninsf  of  freedom  must  next 
be  considered.  First,  it  is  supposed  that  free- 
dom asserts  pure  lawlessness.  This  is  sheer 
fiction.  Freedom  everywhere  presupposes  a 
basis  of  fixity  or  uniformity,  to  give  it  any 
meaning.  Without  this,  of  course,  thought 
perishes.  Now  that  this  freedom  and  uni- 
formity can  coexist,  is  something  which  can- 
not be  speculatively  decided.  The  fact  must 
be  given  as  real  before  its  possibility  can  be 
known.  The  abstract  notion  of  freedom  and 
the  abstract  notion  of  necessity  are  contra- 
dictory, just  as  the  abstract  notion  of  unity 
and  pluralit}'^,  or  simplicity  and  complexity, 
is  a  contradiction ;  but  then  abstractions  have 
no  jurisdiction  in  the  case.  We  must  look 
away  from  the  abstract  notions  to  the  concrete 

1  For  a  fuller  discussion,  see  the  Author's  Metaphysics,  re- 
vised edition. 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL   CAUSALITY  205 

facts,  if  we  would  get  any  light  on  this  prob- 
lem. There  is  no  abstract  freedom  and  no  ab- 
stract necessity.  Turning  now  to  experience, 
we  find  given  a  certain  measure  of  self-con- 
trol and  a  certain  order  of  uniformity.  The 
former  represents  the  only  concrete  notion 
of  freedom  we  possess,  and  the  latter  repre- 
sents the  only  concrete  notion  of  necessity. 
Anything  beyond  this  is  abstract  and  ficti- 
tious. 

The  clearest  illustration  of  the  concrete 
union  of  these  antithetical  elements  is  found 
in  thought  itself.  The  laws  of  thought  repre- 
sent absolute  fixities  of  mental  procedure. 
They  are  the  constants  of  the  mental  equa- 
tion, representing  no  legislation  of  the  will 
but  the  changeless  nature  of  reason.  They 
admit,  then,  of  no  abrogation  or  rebellion ; 
and  yet,  while  thus  secure  from  all  tampering 
and  overthrow,  they  do  not  of  themselves  se- 
cure obedience.  For  this  there  is  needed  an 
act  of  ratification  by  the  free  spirit.  The  mind 
must  accept  these  laws  and  govern  itself  in  ac- 
cordance with  them.  Only  thus  do  we  become 


206  PERSONALISM 

truly  rational,  and  that  by  our  own  free  act. 
Thus  we  discover  freedom  and  uniformity 
united  in  reality,  or  rather  we  discover  reality 
as  having  these  opposite  aspects.  It  is  not  com- 
pounded of  them  as  if  they  preexisted,  but  it 
manifests  itself  in  this  antithetical  way.  Thus 
we  see  that  the  assertion  that  freedom  means 
lawlessness  is  mistaken.  An  element  of  uni- 
formity must  always  be  allied  with  freedom, 
even  in  the  absolute  being ;  at  the  same  time 
we  see  that  this  element  becomes  controlling 
only  through  freedom. 

The  further  objection  that  freedom  would 
make  science  impossible  is  equally  superficial. 
We  must  remind  ourselves  once  more  of  the 
essentially  practical  nature  of  concrete  science, 
and  also  of  the  hypothetical  character  of  its 
deductions.  Science  exists  to  help  us  to  under- 
stand and  master  our  living  experience,  and 
only  so  far  as  it  does  this  has  it  any  real  value 
or  loo-ical  foundation.  When  it  is  freed  from 
this  aim,  it  becomes  simply  a  baseless  dogma- 
tism. The  debate  between  empiricism  and 
apriorism  also  shows  that   neither  school   can 


MECHANICAL   OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  207 

answer  the  question  whether  experience  can 
be  depended  upon.  The  very  stiff  est  apriorism 
can  do  no  more  than  show  that  certain  prin- 
ciples represent  our  mental  constitution  and 
determine  the  general  form  of  our  experience, 
but  they  give  no  security  for  the  actual  order 
of  life.  Space  and  time  are  mental  forms,  but 
they  do  not  decide  what  shall  appear  in  space 
and  time.  Causality  is  a  necessity  of  thought, 
but  it  does  not  determine  what  events  shall  be 
caused  or  what  the  method  of  causality  shall 
be.  Thus  all  the  laws  of  nature  are  contingent. 
They  are  specifications  under  certain  apriori 
principles,  but  they  are  not  necessary  impli- 
cations of  any  or  all  of  them.  Accordingly 
Mr.  Mill  has  told  us  th^  we  may  never  erect 
them  into  absolute  laws,  but  must  rather  limit 
them  to  a  "reasonable  degree  of  extension  to 
adjacent  cases."  This  is  really  the  sum  of 
wisdom  in  the  case.  We  are  to  refrain  from 
dogmatism  about  the  infinities  and  eternities, 
and  hold  our  science  for  what  it  is  worth.  And 
if  we  are  asked  to  explain  the  formula  and  tell 
what  constitutes  "adjacency"  and  what  "de- 


208  PERSONALISM 

gree  of  extension"  is  "reasonable,"  the  an- 
swer must  be  found  in  the  range  of  our  practi- 
cal needs;  that  is,  our  faith  must  be  practical 
rather  than  speculative,  and  must  become 
vasTue  and  uncertain  when  the  matter  is  far 
and  permanently  removed  from  any  practical 
interest. 

Now  applying  these  considerations  to  the 
claim  that  freedom  would  make  science  im- 
possible, we  see  how  baseless  it  is  when  applied 
to  any  real  science.  Concrete  science,  as  we 
have  so  often  said,  concerns  itself  solely  with 
the  modes  of  being  and  happening  among 
things  and  events,  or  with  the  uniformities  of 
coexistence  and  sequence  to  be  found  in  expe- 
rience. This  work  is  entirely  independent  of 
the  question  of  freedom.  The  belief  in  free- 
dom vacates  no  science,  whether  of  psychology 
or  physics  or  chemistry.  As  we  have  seen,  any 
actual  freedom  presupposes  law  and  vanishes 
without  it;  and  as  we  have  also  seen,  no  expe- 
rienced law  is  incompatible  with  our  freedom. 
We  use  the  laws  for  the  realization  of  our 
purposes.  We  govern  the  world  and  ourselves 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  209 

through  the  laws  revealed  in  experience.  The 
laws  left  to  themselves  would  realize  none 
of  our  plans  and  products,  but  just  as  little 
could  we  ourselves  realize  them  apart  from  the 
order  of  law.  Freedom,  then,  is  not  opposed 
to  physics  or  chemistry  or  psychology  or  any 
other  modest  science  which  studies  the  laws 
of  things  and  events,  but  only  to  some  abso- 
lute "Science,"  that  is,  that  speculative  theory 
which  ignores  the  indications  of  experience 
and  the  practical  aim  and  foundation  of  con- 
crete science,  and  seeks  to  bind  all  things  to- 
gether in  a  scheme  of  necessity;  and  this,  so 
far  from  being  science,  is  only  inconsistent 
and  illiterate  dogmatism,  a  pseudo-science  and 
an  enemy  of  humanity. 

The  abstract  treatment  of  the  subject  has 
led  to  the  fancy  that  the  free  person  must  be 
indifferent  to  all  considerations  of  wisdom  and 
knowledge.  If  he  regards  them  at  all,  he  shows 
that  he  is  influenced  by  motives,  and  in  so  far 
is  not  free.  This  is  pure  abstraction.  Suppose 
there  were  a  free  person  with  experience  of 
life's  meanings  and  insight  into  its  values  and 


I 


210  PERSONALISM 

oblig-ations.  There  is  nothing-  in  his  freedom 
to  hinder  his  acting  rationally  or  to  excuse 
him  for  acting  irrationally;  but  how  he  will 
act  does  not  find  its  sufficient  g-round  in  the 
"  antecedent  phenomena  "  alone,  but  also  in 
the  mystery  of  self-determination.  And  this  is 
something  which  cannot  be  mechanically  an- 
alyzed or  deduced  as  a  necessary  resultant  — 
it  can  only  be  experienced.  The  attempt  to 
analyze  it  contradicts  it.  The  attempt  to  con- 
struct it  denies  it.  It  can  only  be  recognized 
as  the  central  factor  of  personality,  the  con- 
dition of  responsibility,  and  the  basis  of  the 
moral  life.  Criticism  cannot  hope  to  construe 
it ;  it  can  only  point  it  out  as  a  fact,  and  show 
that  the  objections  to  it  rest  only  on  an  im- 
perfect understanding  of  thought  itself. 

Persons  untrained  in  philosophic  reflection 
will  likely  think  that  this  view  makes  a  poor 
foundation  for  science  and  philosophy,  but 
they  must  be  told  that  really  it  is  the  best 
foundation  there  is ;  and  apart  from  closet  in- 
timidations it  is  good  enough,  and  it  works 
well  enough  in  practice.   We  have  no  need  to 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  211 

inquire  what  science  as  abstraction  demands, 
but  rather  what  we  human  beings  may  demand, 
or  assume.  And  here  it  is  plain  that  we  may 
not  assume  anything  beyond  those  practical 
uniformities  which  we  find  verified  in  life; 
and  when  we  go  beyond  this  we  are  ventur- 
ing at  our  own  risk,  and  commonly  with  the 
more  hardihood  the  less  we  know.  There  is  no 
security  for  anything  in  the  notion  of  necessity, 
as  we  have  so  often  said  ;  for  as  a  matter  of 
fact  if  the  world  be  the  expression  of  necessity, 
it  is  one  which  is  compatible  with  change,  and 
that  being  so,  no  one  can  tell  how  much  change 
it  may  be  compatible  with.  No  reflection  upon 
the  pure  notion  of  necessity  tells  us  anything 
more  than  this,  —  that  whatever  happens  or 
may  happen  is  necessary,  but  what  it  may  be 
that  will  happen  we  can  tell  only  by  waiting 
and  seeing.  From  our  point  of  view,  the  reason 
for  the  uniformity  of  things,  or  the  progress  of 
things,  or  the  coming  or  the  going  of  things, 
must  be  found  at  last  in  the  will  and  plan  of 
God.  There  is  no  better  security  than  this  in 
any  abstract  speculative  principle,  for  every 


212  PERSONALISM 

such  principle  helps  us  only  by  begging  the 
question.  Indeed,  there  is  really  no  other  secu- 
rity, for  intelligence  is  the  only  foundation  of 
uniformity  of  which  we  have  any  experience. 
We  know  that  intellect  in  its  self-conscious 
activity  can  maintain  uniformity  throughout 
change;  and  when  we  thus  assimilate  the 
world  order  to  self-consciousness  we  have  a 
sense  of  insight  and  satisfaction  which  is  lack- 
ing on  any  other  view,  apart  from  the  fact 
that  every  other  view  simply  begs  the  ques- 
tion. Our  confidence  in  the  orderliness  of 
nature  is  really  of  a  semi-ethical  character, 
and  so  far  as  its  existence  as  a  mental  fact  is 
concerned,  it  is  less  a  logical  warrant  than  a 
psychological  expectation.  We  give  up,  then, 
the  whole  scientific  apparatus,  from  mechanics 
on,  as  anything  ontological,  and  hold  it  only 
for  its  practical  value  in  mastering  experience. 
The  fancy  that  it  is  reality  itself,  the  true 
existence  and  dynamics  of  the  universe,  has 
been  definitely  set  aside. 

Now  it  is  not  science  proper  that  opposes 
this  view,  but  dogmatism ;  and  this  dogmatism 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY   213 

understands  neither  itself  nor  its  problems. 
"  We,  the  people,"  have  an  interest  in  discov- 
ering the  practical  uniformities  in  experience  ; 
"  we,  the  people,"  are  equally  interested  in 
vindicating  the  rational  and  moral  values  of 
life  —  which  are  also  facts  of  experience  ; 
and  "we,  the  people,"  are  the  only  realities 
in  the  case,  and  the  final  court  of  appeal. 

From  this  theistic  point  of  view,  as  was 
pointed  out  in  the  second  lecture,  the  universe 
is  no  fixed  and  completed  static  fact,  but 
rather  a  process  in  which  the  divine  thought 
is  being  progressively  realized.  When  we  com- 
bine this  view  with  the  subjectivity  and  re- 
lativity of  time,  we  are  freed  from  all  the 
puzzles  about  the  finitude  or  infinitude  of  the 
universe.  Science  is  permitted  to  discover  all 
it  can  about  the  space  and  time  relations  of 
events,  and  philosophy  is  permitted  to  discover 
all  it  can  about  the  power  and  purpose  behind 
events,  but  neither  is  permitted  to  erect  the 
forms  of  our  experience  into  absolute  exist- 
ences which  would  make  experience  itself  im- 
possible. The  space  and  time  laws,  as  we  have 


214  PERSONALISM 

seen,  contain  no  provision  for  stopping,  but 
that  decides  nothing  as  to  the  space  and  time 
contents.  On  this  point  only  experience  can 
decide,  and  experience  gives  no  indication. 
Similarly,  we  cannot  do  much  with  the  notion 
of  the  universe  as  a  "  whole  "  or  a  "  totality." 
In  a  vague  way  we  must  believe  that  all  things 
have  their  place  in  the  divine  thought,  but 
when  we  go  beyond  this  and  analyze  the  no- 
tion of  a  whole  or  totality  as  applied  to  the 
system  of  things,  the  air  becomes  so  thin  that 
breathing  is  difficult  and  flight  impossible;  and 
we  fall  a  prey  to  logical  chimeras  and  verbal 
illusions. 

Mechanical  causality  vanishes  with  the  in- 
dependent existence  of  time,  which  is  its  fun- 
damental condition.  There  is  a  certain  pic- 
turability  to  it  when  its  objects  and  events 
are  spatially  and  temporally  separate,  but  this 
completely  disappears  when  space  and  time  are 
made  subjective.  After  that  the  doctrine  be- 
comes only  a  formal  shuffling  of  verbal  phrases, 
and  we  have  absolutely  no  means  of  showing 
that  there  is  any  corresponding  reality.  We 


MECHANICAL  OR  VOLITIONAL  CAUSALITY  215 

have  seen  that  any  concept  of  the  understand- 
ing must  be  formal  and  empty  until  some  ex- 
perience certifies  it  as  real.  We  have  no  such 
experience  in  the  case  of  mechanical  causality, 
and  hence,  even  if  it  were  a  consistent  notion, 
it  could  never  be  shown  to  be  a  fact.  Expe- 
rience certifies  only  volitional  causality  as  real, 
and  our  thought  of  causality  must  be  either 
that  or  nothing:. 

And  if  it  be  asked  how  such  causality  is 
possible,  the  answer  must  be  that  the  question 
itself  is  irrational.  The  basal  fact,  whatever  it 
be,  can  never  be  construed  in  its  possibility  ; 
that  would  be  a  denial  of  its  fundamental 
character.  All  that  can  be  done  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  is  to  show  it  to  be  a  fact,  and  a 
fact  that  accounts  for  all  other  facts.  Here  we 
come  again  upon  our  transcendental  empiricism. 
Intellect  explains  everything  but  itself.  It  ex- 
hibits other  things  as  its  own  products  and  as 
exemplifying  its  own  principles ;  but  it  never 
explains  itself.  It  knows  itself  in  living  and 
only  in  living,  but  it  is  never  to  be  explained 
by  anything,  being  itself  the  only  principle  of 


216  •  PERSONALISM 

explanation.  When  we  attempt  to  explain  it 
by  anything  else,  or  even  by  its  own  princi- 
ples, we  fall  down  to  the  plane  of  mechanism 
again,  and  reason  and  explanation  disappear 
tog-ether.  But  when  we  make  active  intelli- 
gence  the  basal  fact,  all  other  facts  become 
luminous  and  comprehensible,  at  least  in  their 
possibility,  and  intelligence  knows  itself  as 
their  source  and  explanation. 

When  we  consider  the  world  as  an  object 
of  knowledge,  we  come  to  personalism  as  the 
only  tenable  view.  When  we  consider  it  from 
the  standpoint  of  causality,  we  come  equally 
to  personalism  as  the  only  tenable  view. 


THE  FAILUEE   OF  IMPERSONALISM 

Impersonalism  might  riglitly  be  ruled  out, 
on  the  warrant  of  our  previous  studies.  We 
have  seen  that  when  our  fundamental  philo- 
sophic principles  are  impersonally  and  ab- 
stractly taken,  they  disappear  either  in  con- 
tradiction or  in  empty  verbalism.  In  all  our 
thinking,  when  critically  scrutinized,  we  find 
self-conscious  and  active  intelligence  the  pre- 
supposition not  only  of  our  knowledge  but  of 
the  world  of  objects  as  well.  We  might,  then, 
rest  our  case  and  demand  a  verdict.  Peda- 
gogically,  however,  it  seems  better  to  con- 
tinue the  case.  The  naturalistic  obsession  is 
not  easily  overcome,  and  it  takes  time  to  form 
right  habits  of  thinking,  even  when  the  truth 
is  recognized.  The  present  lecture,  then,  is 
devoted  to  showing  somewhat  more  in  detail 
the  shortcomings  of  impersonal  philosophy. 
Impersonalism  may  be  reached  in  two  ways. 


218  PERSONALISM 

The  sense-bound  mind  sees  a  great  variety  of 
extra-mental,  impersonal  things  in  the  world 
about  us,  and  these  very  naturally  bulk  large 
iu  thought.  Thus  things,  with  of  course  such 
modifications  of  the  conception  as  a  superficial 
reflection  may  suggest,  tend  to  become  the 
basal  fact  of  existence.  In  this  way  naturalism 
arises,  with  its  mechanical  way  of  thinking 
and  its  materialistic  and  atheistic  tendencies. 
This  is  one  form  of  impersonalism. 

The  other  form  of  impersonalism  arises 
through  the  fallacy  of  the  abstract.  Uncritical 
minds  always  attempt  to  explain  the  explana- 
tion, thus  unwittingly  committing  themselves 
to  the  infinite  regress.  Accordingly  when  they 
come  to  living  intelligence  as  the  explanation 
of  the  world,  they  fancy  that  they  must  go 
behind  even  this.  We  have  the  categories  of 
being,  cause,  identity,  change,  the  absolute, 
and  the  like ;  and  intelligence  at  best  is  only 
a  specification  or  particular  case  of  these  more 
general  principles.  These  principles,  then,  lie 
behind  all  personal  or  other  existence,  as  its 
presupposition   and  source,  and  constitute  a 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM       219 

set  of  true  first  principles,  from  which  all  defi- 
nite and  concrete  reality  is  derived  by  some 
sort  of  logical  process  or  implication.  This  is 
a  species  of  idealistic  impersonalism.  In  its 
orio-in  it  is  antipodal  to  naturalism,  but  in  the 
outcome  the  two  often  coincide.  Strauss  said 
of  the  Hegelian  ideahsm  that  the  difference 
between  it  and  materialism  was  only  one  of 
words ;  and  this  was  certainly  true  of  Hegel- 
ianism  of  the  left  wing. 

These  two  forms  of  impersonalism  we  have 
now  to  consider,  and  we  begin  with  natural- 
ism. 

As  is  the  case  with  so  many  other  terms, 
naturaHsm  may  have  two  meanings.  It  may 
be  a  principle  of  scientific  method,  and  it 
may  be  a  philosophic  doctrine.  In  the  former 
sense  it  is  about  identical  with  science  itself, 
and  is  full  of  beneficence.  By  making  the 
notion  and  fact  of  law  prominent,  it  has  given 
us  control  over  the  world  and  ourselves,  and 
has  freed  the  human  mind  from  endless  super- 
stition and  ignorance.  Nature  is  no  longer  the 


220  PERSONALISM 

seat  of  arbitrary  caprice;  and  life  no  longer 
swarms  with  omens,  portents,  and  devils.  One 
must  read  at  length  in  the  history  of  human- 
ity to  recognize  our  debt  to  naturalism  in  this 
sense.  We  live  in  peace  and  sanity  where  our 
ancestors  lived  among;  dans^erous  and  destruc- 
tive  obsessions,  because  a  wise  naturalism  has 
displaced  the  false  supernaturalism  of  earlier 
times.  When,  therefore,  we  speak  of  the  fail- 
ure of  naturalism,  we  do  not  mean  the  failure 
of  scientific  naturalism,  for  this  is  one  of 
humanity's  best  friends. 

But  philosophical  naturalism  is  another 
thing.  This  is  not  a  science,  but  a  philosophy, 
and  it  has  to  be  subjected  to  philosophical 
criticism  in  order  to  estimate  its  value.  This 
general  view  is  closely  allied  to  common-sense 
realism,  and  is  indeed  but  a  kind  of  extension 
or  refinement  of  it.  As  the  untrained  mind  is 
naturally  objective  in  its  thinking,  the  things 
and  bodies  about  us  are  taken  for  substantial 
realities  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  they  tend 
in  advance  of  reflection  to  become  the  stand- 
ard by  which  all  else  must  be  measured  and  to 


THE   FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM       221 

which  all  else  must  conform.  Things  that  we 
can  see  and  handle  are  the  undeniable  reali- 
ties. About  them  there  can  be  no  question; 
but  things  invisible  are,  for  common  sense, 
doubtful;  and  as  these  things  of  sense  experi- 
ence by  an  easy  generalization  may  be  gathered 
under  the  one  head,  matter,  and  their  activ- 
ities ascribed  to  the  one  cause,  force,  matter 
and  force  come  to  be  the  supreme  and  basal 
realities  of  our  objective  experience.  When 
their  realm  is  extended,  they  often  come  to  be 
viewed  as  the  sole  realities.  But  these  realities 
are  in  space  and  time,  which  are  looked  upon 
as  undoubted  facts  of  a  sort,  and  when  they 
are  combined  with  matter  and  force  we  get  the 
fundamental  factors  of  the  scheme.  Space  and 
time  furnish  the  scene;  matter  furnishes  the 
existence;  and  force,  manifesting  itself  in 
motion,  furnishes  the  causality.  These  five  fac- 
tors constitute  nature,  and  from  them  nature 
is  to  be  construed  and  comprehended.  Mr. 
Spencer  presents  them  as  the  factors  on  which 
an  interpretation  of  the  world  must  rest,  and 
according  to  him  cosmic  processes  consist  in 


222    .  PERSONALISM 

an  integration  of  matter  and  concomitant  dis- 
sipation of  motion.  Here  space  and  time  are 
implied,  matter  and  motion  are  expressed,  and 
force,  as  the  backlying  causality,  is  under- 
stood;  and  all  interpretation  of  nature,  it  is 
said,  must  be  in  terms  of  these  factors.  This 
might  be  called  the  programme  of  philosophic 
naturalism.  It  aims  to  explain  all  the  higher 
forms  of  experience,  including  life  and  so- 
ciety, in  terms  of  matter  and  force  working  in 
space  and  time  under  the  forms  of  motion. 
To  what  extent  this  is  a  coherent  and  con- 
sistent system  we  have  now  to  consider,  and 
for  a  time  we  shall  limit  our  inquiry  to  its 
explanation  of  the  objective  world  of  bodies, 
postponing  any  inquiry  into  its  explanation  of 
life  and  mind  and  society. 

This  system,  as  said,  is  allied  in  its  begin- 
nings with  common-sense  realism,  and  never 
gets  entirely  away  from  it.  Whatever  changes 
may  be  made  in  the  common-sense  view  in  the 
direction  of  transfigured  realism,  it  still  com- 
monly holds  on  to  the  conception  of  an  imper- 
sonal order  of  things  ;  and  even  when  it  trans- 


THE  FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       223 

forms  things  themselves  into  phenomena  or 
processes,  it  still  affirms  the  existence  of  energy 
under  mechanical  laws,  producing  a  series  of 
impersonal  effects  and  moving  from  phase  to 
phase  according  to  the  parallelogram  of  forces. 
It  is  an  attempt  to  explain  the  world  by  imper- 
sonal and  mechanical  principles.  Of  course 
there  is  no  suspicion  that  transfigured  realism 
and  phenomenalism  are  veritable  Trojan  horses 
for  the  theory. 

This  view  was  perfectly  natural  and  almost 
necessary  for  spontaneous  thought,  when  it 
became  a  little  reflective  and  sought  to  un- 
fold the  implications  of  its  crude  sense  meta- 
physics. But  in  this  view  we  have  a  double 
abstraction.  First,  the  objects  of  experience, 
which  are  given  only  in  experience  and  which 
analysis  shows  are  conceivable  only  as  func- 
tions of  intelligence,  are  abstracted  from  all 
relation  to  intellect  as  the  veritable  fact  in 
itself  which  is  later  to  explain  intellect.  This 
is  as  much  as  if  one  should  abstract  language 
from  intelligence  and  then  adduce  language 
as  the  explanation  of  intelligence.  The  second 


224  PERSONALISM 

abstraction  is  that  even  in  experience  itself 
only  one  aspect  is  fixed  on,  that  of  extension 
and  motion,  and  this  is  supposed  to  be  the 
real.  All  else  is  accidental  and  subordinate, 
but  matter  and  motion  are  beyond  any  ques- 
tion. The  world  of  qualities,  all  that  gives  life 
to  experience,  is  ignored,  and  only  the  quan- 
titative aspect  is  retained.  But  this  is  another 
product  of  fiction.  There  is  no  such  world 
except  among  the  abstractions  of  physicists. 
It  is  as  little  real  as  the  forms  of  abstract 
mechanics  by  which  we  represent  the  relations 
of  phenomena,  without,  however,  pretend- 
ing to  reproduce  the  actual  causality.  Oddly 
enough,  there  is  a  strong  idealistic  factor  in 
this  naturalistic  mechanism.  Looking  at  the 
moving  atoms  with  critical  eye,  nothing  but 
quantitative  distinctions  and  relations  are  dis- 
covered to  exist.  Qualitative  distinctions  and 
relations  are  contributed  by  the  spectator,  and 
they  are  the  chief  part  of  the  real  problem. 
According  to  the  theory,  the  fact  would  be  a 
great  multitude  of  elements  falling  apart  and 
together  according  to  the  laws  of  motion,  but 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM       225 

tlien  there  is  very  much  more  than  this  in 
experience.  Indeed,  this  is  not  experience  at 
all.  A  mind  which  could  completely  grasp  the 
moving  elements  as  they  are  in  themselves 
and  not  in  the  appearance,  would  miss  the 
most  important  part  in   the  system,  that  is, 
the  whole  world  of  sense  qualities  and  dis- 
tinctions,   in    the    midst   and    enjoyment    of 
which  we  live.  Thus  the  most  important  part 
of  experience  is  not  explained  at  all,  but  is 
handed  over  to  a  kind  of  subjective  experi- 
ence somewhere  in  consciousness,   while  the 
theoretical   explanation    applies    only  to   ab- 
stractions. Thus  we  invert  the  true  order  of 
fact.  We  discredit  the  real  experience,  or  ig- 
nore it,  and  triumphantly  solve  an  imaginary 
problem.  As  pointed   out  in  a  previous  lec- 
ture, we  are  shut  up  by  this  way  of  thinking 
to  transfigured  realism   and  all  its  fictitious 
problems,  with  the   result  that  the  world  we 
experience  becomes  more  and  more  subjective, 
while  the  alleged  real  world  becomes  less  and 
less  accessible  and  less  and  less  worth  know- 
ing. This  result  we  reach  quite  apart  from 


226  PERSONALISM 

the  phenomenality  of  the  whole  mechanical 
scheme  as  shown  in  Lecture  III. 

A  further  reflection  on  this  view  as  it  com- 
monly appears  in  popular  discussion  is  that 
on  its  own  realistic  ground  it  is  throughout 
ambiguous.  There  are  two  entirely  different 
types  of  explanation  in  logic,  explanation  by 
classification  and  explanation  by  causality ;  and 
naturalism  oscillates  confusedly  between  them. 
At  times  we  are  told  that  explanation  consists 
entirely  in  discovering  the  uniformities  of  ex- 
perience, and  that  the  ultimate  explanation 
must  consist  in  discovering  the  most  general 
uniformity  of  experience.  At  other  times, 
however,  the  causal  idea  shuffles  in  and  the 
attempt  is  made  to  explain  by  causality.  We 
must  consider  both  types  in  our  criticism. 

Explanation  by  classification  always  remains 
on  the  surface.  Things  are  grouped  together 
by  means  of  some  common  factor  of  likeness, 
but  we  never  get  any  insight  into  the  inner 
nature  of  things  in  this  way.  Such  explana- 
tion has  only  a  formal  convenience,  but  we 
never  can  reach  causes  or  reasons  by  this  road. 


THE  FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM      227 

We  merely  unite  similar  things  in  groups  or 
series,  and  thus  rescue  them  from  their  iso- 
lation and  o'et  a  common  name  for  them  all. 
Such  explanation  merely  drops  out  the  differ- 
ences of  things  and  retains  the  point  or  points 
in  which  they  are  similar,  and  then  regards 
that  as  their  true  explanation.  How  little  this 
in  itself  helps  us  to  insight  is  manifest  upon 
reflection.  We  may  gather  all  living  things 
under  the  one  head,  organism,  but  in  this  case 
•we  simply  find  a  common  term  for  a  multi- 
tude of  things,  which  are  not  identified  in  any 
way  by  the  classification,  but  simply  brought 
under  a  simple  head  for  purposes  of  logical 
convenience.  Organism  applies  to  every  living 
thing  whether  animal  or  vegetable,  spore  or 
tree,  microbe  or  elejjhant;  and  these  differ- 
ences, which  are  really  the  essential  things  in 
the  case,  are  simply  dropped  out  of  sight,  and 
we  have  the  one  term,  organism,  by  which  we 
are  to  understand  the  multitudinous  plurality 
of  living  things.  In  the  same  way  we  may 
regard  all  objects  as  cases  of  matter  and  mo- 
tion. But  we  get  by  such  classification  exceed- 


228  PERSONALISM 

ingly  little  information.  The  generalization  is 
so  vagfue  as  to  include  all  tliincrs  at  the  ex- 
pense  of  meaning  practically  nothing.  We  get 
very  little  valuable  insight  by  classing  all  the 
products  of  human  invention  in  the  world  as 
machines,  or  by  classing  all  living  organisms 
as  integrations  of  matter  and  motion.  It  may 
be  that  they  all  come  under  the  head  of  mat- 
ter and  motion  in  some  aspects  of  their  being, 
but  even  then  we  have  no  valuable  informa- 
tion. It  is,  indeed,  possible  that  some  sciences 
would  need  to  consider  only  the  matter  and 
motion  aspect,  just  as  a  shoemaker  might  con- 
sider men  only  as  shoe-wearing  animals,  and 
no  harm  would  be  done  if  this  aspect  were 
seen  in  its  partial  and  superficial  character. 
In  some  respects  our  human  life  is  a  case  of 
matter  and  motion,  and  in  some  other  respects 
it  is  not  a  case  of  matter  and  motion.  There 
may  be  matter  and  motion  in  connection  with 
thought,  but  thought  is  not  matter  and  motion. 
If  the  naturalistic  formula,  then,,  confines 
itself  simply  to  such  classification,  it  is  plain 
that  it  might  be  in  a  way  true,  and  equally 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM       229 

plain  that  it  would  be  at  best  only  a  partial 
view  and  might  be  worthless,  inasmuch  as  it 
would  leave  all  the  differences  of  things,  which 
constitute  their  special  peculiarities  and  the 
leading  problem  in  dealing  with  them,  out  of 
consideration,  and  merely  find  their  explanation 
in  some  one  point  in  which  they  should  agree. 
It  would  be  scarcely  more  absurd  if  we  should 
decide  to  explain  all  human  bodies  by  the  fact 
that  they  all  had  noses  and  ears,  and  should 
then  leave  out  of  consideration  the  multitud- 
inous personal  peculiarities  whereby  each  is 
constituted  a  separate  and  incommunicable 
individual. 

It  is  plain,  then,  that  if  the  naturalistic  ex- 
planation is  to  be  of  any  use  to  us,  it  must  go 
beyond  these  superficial  generalities  of  classi- 
fication, and  must  descend  into  the  realm  of 
causation,  and  also  give  account  of  the  specific 
peculiarities  or  differentia  of  concrete  things. 
And  here  difficulties  begin  to  thicken. 

Objects  in  space,  large  or  small,  can  be  pic- 
tured, and  it  seems  at  first  as  if  the  natural- 
istic view  admitted  of  being  really  conceived. 


230  PERSONALISM 

We  can  easily  imagine  a  variety  of  bodies  in 
space  variously  grouped  and  moving,  and 
these  bodies  might  conceivably  be  very  small, 
so  as  to  give  vis  the  molecules  or  atoms  of 
theoretical  physics.  These  also  admit  in  a  way 
of  being  pictured  in  their  spatial  relations  or 
combinations;  but  when  we  come  to  add  to 
these  the  notion  of  causality,  so  as  to  explain 
the  order  of  spatial  and  temporal  change,  we 
find  ofrave  difficulties  arisins-.  With  bodies  of 
the  kind  described,  the  only  thing  we  can  ex- 
plain is  amorphous  masses ;  that  is,  with  bare 
lumps  we  can  explain  only  heaps.  Unless  we 
assume  a  mover  without,  we  must  posit  moving 
forces  within ;  and  unless  these  forces  are  un- 
der some  structural  law,  they  will  explain  only 
amorphous  masses  again.  Simply  pulling  and 
pushing  in  a  straight  line,  as  central  forces  are 
supposed  to  do,  make  no  provision  for  organi- 
zation. Assuming,  theiij  the  existence  of  such 
forces,  we  have  a  double  order  of  facts,  one  of 
spatial  change  and  one  of  a  metaphysical  na- 
ture. The  former  is  a  changfe  amonof  thinsfs ; 
the  latter  is  a  change  in  things.    The  former 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM       231 

depends  on  the  latter.  All  substantial  changes 
amono-  thing's  must  be  viewed  as  translations 
into  phenomenal  form  of  dynamic  relations  in 
things,  and  the  spatial  system  can  be  under- 
stood only  through  the  dynamic  system.  No 
spatial  change  explains  itself  or  anything  else 
until  it  is  referred  to  a  hidden  dynamism.  If 
we  subtract  a  chemical  element  from  a  given 
molecule  no  one  can  see  the  slightest  reason 
in  that  fact  for  the  resulting  chemical  change, 
unless  we  assume  a  system  of  dynamic  rela- 
tions within  the  elements  themselves  which 
determines  the  form  of  their  manifestation 
and  interaction,  and  this  system  must  be  as 
complex  and  various  as  the  phenomena  them- 
selves. 

If  we  had  a  great  mass  of  type  no  one 
would  be  dull  enough  to  suppose  that  that 
would  explain  literature,  even  in  its  mechan- 
ical expression.  It  might  indeed  be  said  that 
literature  in  its  mechanical  form  arises  throusrh 
the  differentiation  and  integration  of  type;  but 
while  this  would  be  true  it  would  hardly  pay 
expenses,  for  the  work  of  the  compositor  can- 


232  PERSONALISM 

not  be  done  by  polysyllabic  words.  But  if  we 
were  determined  to  get  along  without  the  type- 
setter, we  should  have  to  endow  the  type  with 
highly  mysterious  forces  if  they  are  to  be  equal 
to  their  task.  Plain  pushes  and  pulls  would 
simply  give  us  type  in  heaps  or  scattered 
about,  as  the  pushes  or  pulls  predominated, 
and  this  would  not  meet  the  case.  We  must 
have  type  which  will  pull  and  push  themselves 
into  the  order  demanded  by  the  thought.  Thus 
if  the  type  were  to  set  up  "  Paradise  Lost,"  they 
would  have  to  be  such  that  sundry  type  would 
come  to  the  front  and  arrange  themselves  in 
the  following  order  :  — 

"  Of  man's  first  disobedience  and  the  fruit 
Of  that  forbidden  tree  whose  mortal  taste 
Brought  death  into  our  world  and  all  our  woe, 
Sing,  heavenly  muse." 

The  other  type  must  likewise  march  to  their 
proper  positions  in  order  to  make  up  the  work. 
But  in  that  case  it  is  plain  that  the  idea  of  the 
work  is  already  immanent  in  the  constitution 
of  the  type,  otherwise  we  should  be  seeking  to 
explain  the  orderly  result  by  the  chance  jos- 
tlings  of  the  type.  That  this  is  impossible  every 


THE  FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       233 

one  can  see  in  the  case  of  typesetting.  Every 
one  sees  here  that  the  arrangement  of  the  type 
is  as  much  a  part  of  the  problem  as  their  exist- 
ence, and  that  the  existence  does  not  imply 
the  arrangement.  But  if  we  insist  on  making 
the  existence  imply  the  arrangement,  we  must 
carry  the  arrangement  into  the  existence  in 
the  form  of  ''  subtle  tendencies  "  and  "  mys- 
terious potentialities  ;  "  and  these,  in  addition 
to  being  of  exceedingly  elusive  meaning,  do 
not  illumine  the  problem  at  all,  but  rather 
darken  it.  To  complete  the  parallel  we  must 
suppose  that  the  type  themselves  were  not 
originally  given  in  their  separate  character, 
but  only  an  indefinite,  incoherent,  unknowable 
homogeneity,  which  through  continuous  differ- 
entiations and  integrations  produced  the  type 
with  all  their  specific  characters  and  subtle 
tendencies  and  mysterious  potentialities.  This 
gives  us  an  idea,  on  the  naturalistic  basis,  of 
the  necessity  of  a  hidden  dynamism  for  the 
explanation  of  spatial  grouping  and  also  of  its 
unmanageable  complexity. 

This  invisible  dynamic  system  is  overlooked 


234  PERSONALISM 

altogether  by  spatial  thought.  Such  thought 
has  only  the  atoms  and  the  void  as  data,  and 
it  can  easily  conceive  the  atoms  as  variously 
grouped  within  this  void.  The  spatial  imagina- 
tion serves  for  this  insight  and  nothing  more 
is  demanded  ;  but  when  thought  is  clarified  to 
the  point  of  seeing  the  necessity  of  forming 
an  unpicturable  dynamism  behind  the  system 
of  spatial  changes,  then  the  dark  impenetra- 
bility of  our  physical  metaphysics  begins  to 
appear.  Spatial  combination  we  can  picture ; 
volitional  causality  we  experience ;  but  what 
that  is  which  is  less  than  the  latter  and  more 
than  the  former  is  an  exceedingly  difficult 
problem.  The  fact  is,  we  are  simply  using 
formal  counters  here,  and  are  unable  to  tell 
whether  there  is  anything  whatever  corre- 
sponding to  them.  We  believe  that  there  must 
be  cause  and  ground,  and  then  we  suppose 
that  the  atoms  themselves  can  be  causes;  but 
when  we  attempt  to  think  the  matter  through, 
then  we  soon  find  that  we  are  applying  the 
categories,  as  Kant  would  say,  in  a  region 
where  we  have  no  experience,  or  rather  no  in- 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM       235 

tuition.  The  result  is,  our  thought  may  be  in 
a  way  formally  correct,  but  we  have  no  assur- 
ance that  it  represents  any  actual  fact  what- 
ever. This,  then,  shows  first  of  all  the  dark 
unpicturability  of  naturalistic  metaphysics 
from  the  dynamic  side  ;  and  remembering  the 
results  of  the  discussion  of  the  previous  lec- 
ture, we  find  reason  for  saying  that  this  meta- 
physics is  entirely  fictitious.  It  is  an  attempt 
to  apj)ly  the  notion  of  causality  under  circum- 
stances, and  in  a  form,  which  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  construe. 

Can  life  and  mind  and  morals  and  society 
be  explained  on  a  naturalistic  basis?  These 
questions  were  warmly  debated  in  the  last  gen- 
eration, but  seldom  understood.  How  naive  it 
all  was,  is  manifest  as  soon  as  we  look  at  the 
matter  from  a  more  critical  standpoint.  The 
space  and  time  world  of  phenomena  explains 
nothing ;  it  is  rather  the  problem  itself.  The 
real  account  of  anything  must  be  sought  in 
the  world  of  power ;  and  this  world  eludes  us 
altogether,  unless  we  raise  power  to  include  in- 
telligence and  purpose.  The  unpicturable  no- 


236  PERSONALISM 

tions  of  the  understanding,  as  substance,  cause, 
unity,  identity,  etc.,  elude  all  spatial  intuition, 
and  vanish  even  from  thought  when  imperson- 
ally taken.  Concerning  life  and  mind  and  man, 
it  is  permitted  to  look  for  all  the  uniformities 
we  can  find  amono;  their  antecedents  and  con- 
comitants,  but  this  is  only  classification  and 
reveals  no  causality.  And  any  fairly  clear- 
minded  critic  is  willing  to  have  anything  what- 
ever discovered  in  the  space  and  time  realm ; 
for  he  knows  that  the  only  question  of  any 
real  importance  is  that  of  causation.  Those  per- 
sons who  expect  to  find  matter  to  be  the  sufii- 
cient  cause  of  life,  and  those  who  fear  it  may 
be,  reveal  thereby  such  profound  ignorance  of 
the  true  state  of  the  problem  that,  while  charity 
is  called  for,  they  merit  no  further  considera- 
tion. Even  if  so-called  spontaneous  generation 
proved  to  be  a  fact,  it  would  only  mean  that 
living  things  may  arise  under  other  phenome- 
nal conditions  than  those  that  generally  obtain ; 
it  would  not  mean  that  "  material  causes  "  are 
able  of  themselves  to  produce  living  beings. 
The  wonder  would  lie  altogether  in  the  phe- 


THE  FAILURE   OF   IMPERSONALISM       237 

nomenal  realm,  and  would  leave  the  question 
of  the  power  at  work  as  obscure  as  ever.  Thus 
as  soon  as  we  distinguish  the  question  of  clas- 
sification and  sjDatial  arrangement  from  that  of 
causality,  we  see  how  superficial  naturalistic 
philosophy  has  been.  Classification  has  passed 
for  identification,  phenomena  have  been  made 
into  things,  and  sequence  has  been  mistaken 
for  causality.  This  naive  confusion  has  made 
speculation  very  easy. 

But  supposing  this  dynamic  difficulty  in  a 
way  removed,  we  next  meet  another  puzzle 
arising  from  overlooking  the  distinction  be- 
tween concrete  and  exhaustive  thinking-  and 
symbolic  or  shorthand  thinking.  In  other 
words,  popular  naturalism  assumes  that  we  have 
the  simple  physical  elements  in  simple  spatial 
relations,  and  that  they  are  endowed  with  cer- 
tain central  forces  of  no  very  comj^lex  kind, 
but  such  that  they  admit  of  producing  a  great 
variety  of  complications,  thus  passing  from  the 
simple  to  the  complex  and  from  the  homo- 
geneous to  the  heterogeneous.  Every  one  will 
recall  at  this  point  the  current  formula  of  evo- 


238  PERSONALISM 

lution,  which  claims  to  proceed  from  the  like 
to  the  unlike,  from  the  simple  to  the  complex, 
from  homogeneity  to  heterogeneity,  through 
continuous  differentiations  and  integrations. 
This  difficulty  is  only  a  specification  in  detail 
of  the  tautology  which  inheres  in  every  me- 
chanical doctrine  of  causation,  as  pointed  out 
in  the  last  lecture. 

This  fancy  is  almost  the  sum  of  naturalistic 
philosophizing.  If  the  infinite  complexity  of 
the  concrete  problem,  in  spite  of  all  the  sim- 
plifications and  identifications  of  words,  were 
seen,  naturalism  would  lose  all  credit.  The  fancy 
in  question  is  simply  the  fallacy  of  the  univer- 
sal, and  rests  upon  mistaking  the  logical  pro- 
cess for  an  ontological  one,  or  from  mistaking 
logical  application  for  ontological  implication. 
The  class  term  applies  to  every  member  of 
the  class,  but  it  implies  no  one  of  them.  Thus 
the  term  man  applies  to  every  human  being, 
but  it  does  not  imply  any  living  human  being 
whatever.  But  this  is  overlooked  by  the  spec- 
ulator, and  he  thinks  it  very  possible  to  pass 
from  complexity  to  simplicity,  from  heteroge- 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM       239 

neity  to  homogeneity,  and  in  this  way  he  suc- 
ceeds in  reaching  some  simple,  almost  content- 
less,  terms,  and  these,  which  are  really  the  last 
terms  of  logical  abstraction,  are  supposed  to  be 
the  first  terms  of  real  existence.  Then  these 
terms,  because  very  simple  and  vague  and  in- 
definite in  themselves,  seem  to  raise  no  ques- 
tions and  excite  no  surprise.  They  may  well, 
then,  be  taken  as  original  starting-points  for 
world  building  and  similar  cosmological  ex- 
ploits. In  this  way,  then,  such  abstractions  as 
matter  and  force  are  reached,  and  they  take  the 
place  of  the  physical  elements,  which  are  the 
only  realities  in  the  case.  But  in  all  this  we 
simply  forget  the  concrete  facts.  They  remain 
as  complex  and  multiform  as  ever.  There  is  no 
simple  thing,  matter,  and  no  simple  fact,  mo- 
tion, to  be  distributed,  but  rather  an  indefinite 
number  of  moving  things  of  various  quantity 
and  quality  and  in  the  most  complex  and  mys- 
terious dynamic  relations.  When  we  pass  to 
the  concrete  we  see  the  difference  between  the 
logical  concept  and  the  concrete  reality,  and 
we  also  see  that  logical  simplification  does  not 


240  PERSONALISM 

affect  the  reality  at  all.  When,  then,  we  re- 
place the  physical  elements  by  the  logical  ab- 
straction, matter,  we  do  not  reach  anything 
indefinite  or  incoherent  or  homogeneous.  Each 
of  these  elements  has  its  own  definite  qualities 
definitely  related  in  a  definite  system  of  defi- 
nite law.  There  is  no  incoherency  in  the  real 
system,  and  no  progress  toward  greater  cohe- 
rency, except  in  relation  to  standards  which 
we  impose  upon  the  system.  If  we  take  the 
solar  system  as  a  standard,  we  may  call  the 
nebulous  period  incoherent.  If  we  take  a  solid 
body  as  a  standard,  we  may  call  a  gas  incoher- 
ent. If  we  take  a  mature  organism  as  a  stand- 
ard, we  may  call  the  embryo  incoherent.  But  in 
all  these  cases  the  incoherency  is  relative  to  an 
assumed  standard,  and  is  non-existent  for  the 
underlying  nature  of  things  and  the  system  of 
law.  The  homogeneity  and  heterogeneity,  the 
coherence  and  incoherence,  are  relative  to  the 
speculator  and  his  point  of  view,  and  in  fact 
are  but  shadows  of  himself. 

We  may,  then,  admit  the  evolution  formula 
as  a  description  of  the  order  in  which  things 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM      241 

come  along,  such  that  the  earlier  forms  were 
simple  and  homogeneous  and  the  later  forms 
more  complex  and  differentiated;  but  we  can- 
not admit  that  this  represents  any  possible 
order  of  mechanical  causality  or  any  simplifi- 
cation of  the  concrete  problem.  We  can  never 
by  classification  reduce  our  problem  to  lower 
terms.  If  we  begin  with  the  complex  no  logic 
will  enable  us  to  escape  into  the  simple  on  the 
impersonal  plane,  and  if  we  begin  with  the 
simple  we  can  never  advance  to  the  complex. 
Whatever  we  begin  with,  we  are  compelled  to 
retain,  however  far  back  we  may  reason.  The 
law  of  the  sufficient  reason  compels  us  to  find 
in  the  premises  full  and  adequate  preparation 
for  the  conclusion ;  and  if  the  conclusion  be 
complex,  then  there  must  be  corresponding 
complexity  in  the  premises.  We  may  call  it  po- 
tential rather  than  actual,  but  all  the  same  we 
are  compelled  to  make  our  antecedents  such 
that  when  they  are  exhaustively  understood 
they  are  seen  to  contain,  even  to  the  minutest 
detail,  all  that  will  ever  appear  in  the  conclu- 
sion.   The  logical  equivalence  of  cause  and 


242  PERSONALISM 

effect  in  any  necessary  scheme  to  which  we 
referred  in  the  last  lecture  makes  this  abso- 
lutely necessary,  and  hence  makes  it  forever 
impossible  to  look  upon  the  evolutionary  doc- 
trine as  valid  in  causation.  If  we  suppose  a 
cause  apart  from  the  movement,  which  is  suc- 
cessively manifesting  a  plan  beginning  with 
the  early  and  simple  forms  and  then  proceeding 
to  higher  and  more  complex  and  differentiated 
forms,  we  can  understand  that  by  assimilating 
it  to  our  own  intellectual  life ;  but  apart  from 
that  the  doctrine  is  absolutely  impossible.  We 
are  compelled  on  the  impersonal  plane  to  as- 
sume everything  either  actually  or  potentially 
at  the  beginning,  or,  if  there  was  no  begin- 
ning, then  to  assume  it  from  everlasting. 

The  two  conceptions  of  evolution,  evolu- 
tion as  a  description  of  the  phenomenal  order 
and  evolution  as  a  doctrine  of  causation,  have 
never  been  sufficiently  distinguished  by  the 
rank  and  file  of  speculators  in  this  field.  They 
have '  taken  the  phenomenal  order  for  the 
causal  order,  and  have  seldom  raised  the  ques- 
tion as  to  what  their  evolution  really  means  and 


THE  FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       243 

what  its  conditions  may  be.  Accordingly  we 
have  the  proposition  to  evolve  the  atoms,  with 
all  the  familiar  formulas  about  passing  from 
the  homogeneous  to  the  heterogeneous,  etc. 
Nowadays  that  the  supposedly  fixed  elements 
seem  to  be  combinations  of  something  simpler, 
this  attempt  is  frequently  met  with.  It  is  sug- 
gested that  the  atoms  of  those  substances 
which  lie  in  the  same  chemical  group  are  per- 
haps built  up  from  the  same  ions,  or  at  least 
from  ions  which  possess  the  same  mass  and 
electric  charge,  and  that  the  differences  which 
exist  in  the  materials  thus  constituted  arise 
more  from  the  manner  of  the  association  of 
the  ions  in  the  atom  than  from  differences  in 
the  fundamental  character  of  the  ions  which 
build  up  the  atoms.  Well,  here  we  have  the 
same  thing — the  attempt  to  explain  qualita- 
tive by  quantitative  difference,  and  the  same 
failure  to  inquire  what  the  attempt  really  pre- 
supposes. 

If  we  should  conceive  a  half-dozen  bricks 
placed  one  at  each  angle  of  a  pentagon  and 
one  at  the  centre,  and  should  then  conceive 


244  PERSONALISM 

an  additional  brick  added  so  as  to  have  one  at 
each  angle  of  a  hexagon  and  one  at  the  centre, 
we  see  no  reason  whatever  for  any  particnlar 
change  of  quality  of  the  combination  arising 
from  the  addition  of  the  new  brick.  And  that 
is  all  that  bare  quantity  can  do.  No  variations 
of  quantity  contain  any  explanation  of  quali- 
tative change,  unless  we  assume  a  qualitative 
system  in  connection  with  the  quantity.  We 
can  add  elements  to  atomic  groups  or  sub- 
tract them ;  but  unless  the  elements  them- 
selves stand  in  definite  dynamic  relations  which 
imply  particular  groups  and  qualities,  to  the 
exclusion  of  other  groups  and  qualities,  we 
cannot  deal  with  the  problem  at  all.  If  the 
atoms  are  not  in  such  relations,  the  problem  is 
of  course  insoluble ;  and  if  they  are  in  such 
relations,  we  assume  the  fact  to  be  explained 
from  the  start.  It  is  then  conceivable  that 
our  present  elements  might  be  analyzed  into 
other  elements  which  might  be  called  simpler, 
but  the  thing  which  is  not  possible  is  by  such 
an  analysis  to  escape  from  the  complexity  of 
the  existing  system,  because  we  should  have 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM       245 

to  trace  into  those  antecedents  which  are  to 
produce  the  present  complexity  and  difference 
the  same  complexity  and  difference  in  one 
form  or  another. 

Moreover,  in  thinking  the  matter  through 
we  should  have  to  inquire  whether  evolution 
as  such  assumes  anything  or  not.  Does  it 
begin  with  something  vague,  formless,  and 
lawless,  or  does  it  begin  with  a  definite  sys- 
tem and  reign  of  law,  so  that  everything  is 
determined  in  its  place  and  relation  ?  In  the 
former  case  we  can  take  no  step  whatever  in 
the  way  of  understanding  anything.  It  would 
be  simply  the  notion  of  pure  being,  which  is 
nothing,  and  which,  if  it  were  anything,  could 
never  be  used  for  the  understanding  of  ex- 
perience. But  if  we  begin  with  a  definite  sys- 
tem of  law,  in  which  all  the  factors  are  sub- 
ject to  the  reign  of  law,  then  it  is  plain  we 
never  can  introduce  anything  new  into  the 
system,  for  everything  is  determined  from 
the  beginning ;  and  if  there  was  no  begin- 
ning, everything  was  determined  from  ever- 
lasting.   In  any  mechanical  system,  under  the 


246  PERSONALISM 

law  of  the  logical  equivalence  of  cause  and 
effect,  it  is  forever  impossible  to  make  new  de- 
partures or  to  reach  anything  essentially  new. 
We  can  only  oscillate  between  the  present 
actuality  and  the  past  potentiality,  potential- 
izing  the  present  as  we  go  back  in  our  thought, 
and  actualizing  the  potentiality  as  we  come 
forward  in  our  thought,  but  always  so  that 
potential  plus  actual  must  remain  a  constant 
quantity.  In  popular  thought  about  this 
matter  there  is  a  continual  oscillation,  for 
the  most  part  unsuspected,  between  the  two 
points  of  view.  We  try  to  explain  everything 
by  antecedents,  and  so  by  the  aid  of  the  fal- 
lacy of  the  universal  as  we  go  backward  we 
succeed  in  reaching  to  our  satisfaction  some 
indefinite,  incoherent  homogeneity.  But  logic 
forthwith  shows  the  emptiness  of  this  notion 
and  the  impossibility  of  reaching  it.  Then  we 
begin  again,  mindful  this  time  of  the  reign  of 
law,  and  assume  an  order  of  law,  and  then  fail 
to  notice  that  as  soon  as  we  do  that,  on  the  im- 
personal plane  we  have  determined  everything 
for  all  future  time,  so  that  nothing  new  may 


THE   FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       247 

hereafter  be  introduced  without  some  irrup- 
tion from  without.  No  new  departures  are 
possible  in  a  mechanical  scheme. 

The  same  difficulty  appears  when  we  work 
the  question  forward  instead  of  backward. 
Here  again  the  naturalistic  speculator  has  com- 
monly been  under  the  influence  of  sense 
bondage  and  has  tacitly  assumed  that  what 
he  could  not  see  was  not  there,  so  that  differ- 
ences which  did  not  manifest  themselves  to  the 
senses  might  be  regarded  as  non-existent.  But 
the  same  law  which  we  have  been  referring  to 
makes  it  clear  that  no  developing  thing  can 
ever  be  understood  or  defined  by  what  it  mo- 
mentarily is,  but  only  by  all  that  which  it  is 
to  become.  It  can  be  explained,  then,  not  by 
reference  to  its  crude  beginnings,  but  only  by 
reference  to  the  finished  outcome.  Aristotle 
reached  this  insight  two  thousand  years  ago. 
When,  then,  the  biological  speculator  tells  us, 
as  if  it  were  a  very  conclusive  fact,  that  the 
embryos  of  many  of  the  higher  animals  look 
alike  in  their  earliest  stages,  we  are  not  so  much 
impressed  as  perhaps  we  are  expected  to  be; 


248  PERSONALISM 

for,  however  much  things  may  look  aUke,  if 
they  are  under  different  laws  of  development 
they  are,  to  the  eye  of  reason,  even  in  the 
earliest  phases,  unlike  with  all  the  unlikenesses 
that  later  appear.  The  human  embryo,  when 
it  is  undistinguishable  by  sight  from  the  em- 
bryo of  a  dog  or  sheep,  is  after  all  a  human 
embryo,  and  not  the  embryo  of  a  sheep.  It  is 
already  under  the  law  of  human  development, 
and  when  it  quickly  passes  into  the  human 
form  this  is  not  something  adventitiously  taken 
on  through  some  verbal  hocus-pocus  about 
differentiation  and  integration,  but  is  simply 
the  manifestation  of  the  immanent  organic  laws 
under  which  it  holds  its  existence  and  its  de- 
velopment takes  place. 

The  whole  question  of  the  transformation 
of  species  has  been  equally  confused  in  natu- 
ralistic discussion.  There  are  really  two  ques- 
tions to  be  considered.  One  is.  Can  existing 
organic  forms  be  genetically  traced  to  earlier 
forms  so  that  the  lines  of  descent  as  we  go 
backward  converge  to  some  common  origin,  as 
the  branches  of  a  tree  all  meet  in  a  common 


THE  FAILURE  OF  IMPERSONALISM      249 

trunk  ?  The  other  question  is,  What  are  the 
individual  things  themselves,  and  what  is  the 
power  that  produces  them?  The  former  ques- 
tion belongs  to  science,  the  latter  belongs  to 
philosophy. 

The  former  question  has  only  a  subordinate 
interest,  and  philosophy  is  content  to  have  the 
answer  fall  out  as  it  may,  provided  fact  and 
logic  be  duly  regarded.  Its  supposed  impor- 
tance is  due  to  the  implicit  assumption  of  a 
self-running  nature  which  does  a  great  many 
unintended  things  on  its  own  account,  and  to 
the  fancy  that  such  genetic  connection  would 
mean  identity  of  nature  in  the  successive  mem- 
bers of  the  series. 

The  second  question  is  the  only  one  of  any 
real  importance.  In  considering  it  we  must 
first  note  the  nominalism  of  the  doctrine  of 
descent. 

A  species  as  such  is  nothing  but  a  group 
of  individuals  which  more  or  less  closely  re- 
semble one  another.  In  the  case  of  the  more 
prominent  living  species  we  should  probably 
add  the  notion  of  genetic  connection,  but  this 


250  PERSONALISM 

would  iu  no  way  affect  the  nominalism  of  the 
doctrine.  If,  then,  the  so-called  transformation 
of  species  took  place,  the  objective  fact,  apart 
from  our  logical  manipulation,  would  be  this  : 
If  individuals  were  taken  from  points  widely 
apart  in  a  line  of  descent,  they  would  be  so  un- 
like that  we  should  not  class  them  together. 
But   this  would  not  identify  individuals,  or 
higher  and  lower  forms.    The  fact  would  be 
a  power  producing  individuals  in  such  a  way 
that  they  could  be  variously  classified,  possibly 
on  an  ascending  scale  and  in  adaptation  to 
hiofher  and  fuller  life.   In  that  case  we  should 
have  the  familiar  progress  from   the    simple 
to  the  complex,  from  the  low  to  the  high,  and 
all  the  rest ;  but  it  would  be  entirely  free  from 
all  those  fearsome  identifications  of  man  with 
the  monkey,  etc.,  which  have  so  infested  the 
popular   imagination.    For  one    holding   the 
phenomenality  of  nature    and   the  volitional 
character  of  all    so-called  natural    causality, 
there  is  nothing  to  excite  alarm  in  any  per- 
missible doctrine  of  the  transformation  of  spe- 
cies. 


THE  FAILURE  OF   IMPERSONALISM       251 

We  find  naturalism,  then,  entirely  in  its  right 
when  it  seeks  to  give  a  description  of  the 
phenomenal  order  according  to  which  things 
have  appeared,  but  we  find  it  as  a  philosophy 
exceedingly  superficial  and  uncritical.  Apart 
from  the  critical  doubts  which  we  have  discov- 
ered in  the  previous  lecture  respecting  mechan- 
ical causality  in  general,  and  the  necessity  of 
lifting  the  problem  of  causation  to  the  personal 
plane  in  order  to  keep  it  from  vanishing  in 
the  Heraclitic  flux,  we  find  that  this  doctrine 
vanishes  in  complete  and  barren  tautology  as 
soon  as  we  take  it  concretely  and  exhaustively, 
instead  of  symbolically  and  in  a  shorthand 
way.  This  way  of  thinking  is  compelled  to 
carry  the  present  into  the  past,  or  into  its  ma- 
chinery of  whatever  sort,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
empty  it  of  all  progress  of  any  kind.  When, 
then,  in  such  a  scheme  we  make  a  cross  section 
of  the  cosmic  flow  qr  any  part  of  it  anywhere, 
we  are  compelled  to  find  potentially  or  actually 
present  all  that  ever  will  be ;  and  if  we  choose 
to  carry  the  regress  never  so  far  back,  the  same 
necessity  attends  us;  and  if  at  last  we  reach 


252  PERSONALISM 

some  nebulous  period  of  dispersed  matter  or  a 
fiery  cloud,  even  there,  when  we  look  around 
upon  the  situation  with  our  eyes  open,  we  are 
compelled  to  find  latent  and  potential  all  that 
will  ever  emerge  in  all  the  future  through  which 
the  system  may  endure.  In  addition,  when 
naturalism  becomes  mathematical  and  seeks  to 
reduce  all  qualitative  distinctions  to  quantita- 
tive ones,  it  leaves  the  real  world  altogether, 
and  becomes  a  pure  abstraction  like  the 
world  of  abstract  mechanics.  Like  that  world, 
it  has  only  representative  value,  and  is  never 
to  be  mistaken  for  the  world  of  real  existence. 
These  are  the  leading  difficulties  of  natural- 
ism as  a  philosophy.  There  are  numberless 
difficulties  of  detail,  but  into  these  we  forbear 
to  enter.  The  doctrine  is  sufficiently  convicted 
and  judged  by  its  doctrine  of  causaHty,  and 
the  hopeless  tautology  and  endless  regress  to 
which  it  is  condemned,  and  also  by  the  impos- 
sibility of  verifying  as  actual  any  of  its  lead- 
ing conceptions.  They  must  forever  remain, 
at  best,  mere  conceptual  forms,  to  which  no 
reality  can  be  shown  to  correspond. 


THE  FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       253 

Naturalism  may  be  dismissed  as  a  failure. 
It  remains  to  show  that  impersonalism  as 
idealism  is  equally  so.  When  we  approach  the 
metaphysical  problem  from  the  side  of  know- 
ledge, it  is  easy  to  overlook  the  fact  of  will  and 
causality  in  existence,  and  conclude  that  things 
are  only  ideas.  And  then,  since  the  mind  also 
is  an  object  of  knowledge,  it  is  easy  in  the 
same  way  to  reach  the  conclusion  that  it  too 
is  only  an  idea  or  group  of  ideas.  The  next 
thing  is  to  eliminate  the  personal  implication 
from  these  ideas,  and  then  we  forthwith  reach 
the  conclusion  that  the  mind  itself  is  a  func- 
tion of  impersonal  ideas.  Thus  impersonalism 
is  once  more  installed. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  this  view  arises.  The 
epistemological  interest  makes  us  unwilling  to 
admit  anything  that  cannot  be  conceptually 
grasped.  Accordingly  it  seeks  to  make  ideas 
all-embracing.  At  the  same  time  it  is  clear 
that  this  view  is  a  tissue  of  abstractions.  The 
impersonal  idea  is  a  pure  fiction.  All  actual 
ideas  are  owned,  or  belong  to  some  one,  and 
mean  nothing  as  floating  free.  We  have  al- 


254  PERSONALISM 

ready  seen  that  the  various  categories  of 
thought,  apart  from  their  formal  character  as 
modes  of  intellectual  procedure,  get  any  real 
significance  only  in  the  concrete  and  self-con- 
scious life  of  the  living  mind.  Apart  from  this, 
when  considered  as  real  they  become  self- 
destructive  or  contradictory.  The  idealism  of 
the  type  we  are  now  considering  assumes  that 
these  categories  admit  of  being  conceived  in 
themselves,  and  that  they  are  in  a  measure 
the  preconditions  of  concrete  existence,  and  in 
such  a  way  that  we  might  almost  suppose  that 
a  personal  being  is  compounded  of  being  plus 
unity  plus  identity  plus  causality,  etc.  Thus 
personal  existence  appears  as  the  outcome  and 
product  of  something  more  ultimate  and  fun- 
damental. The  fictitious  nature  of  this  view 
has  already  appeared.  When  we  ask  what  we 
mean  by  any  of  these  categories,  it  turns  out,  as 
we  have  seen,  that  we  mean  the  significance  we 
find  them  to  have  in  our  self-conscious  life.  In 
the  concrete  the  terms  have  no  meaning  except 
as  it  is  abstracted  from  our  own  personal  experi- 
ence. The  only  unity  we  know  anything  about. 


THE   FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM      255 

apart  from  the  formal  unities  of  logic,  is  the 
unity  of  the  unitary  self ;  and  the  only  identity 
we  know  anything  about  is  no  abstract  con- 
tinuity of  existence  through  an  abstract  time, 
it  is  simply  the  self-equality  of  intelligence 
throughout  its  experience.  And  the  change 
which  we  find  is  not  an  abstract  change  run- 
ning off  in  an  abstract  time,  but  is  simply  the 
successive  form  under  which  the  self-equal  in- 
telligence realizes  its  purpose  and  projects  the 
realizing  activity  against  the  background  of 
its  self-consciousness.  Similarly  for  being  it- 
self ;  in  the  concrete  it  means  the  passing  ob- 
ject of  perception,  or  else  it  means  existence 
like  our  own. 

So  much  for  the  nature  of  the  categories. 
But  still  graver  difficulties  arise  when  we  in- 
quire concerning  the  place  of  their  existence 
and  the  ground  of  their  combination  and 
movement.  If  we  suppose  them  to  precede 
personality,  we  must  ask  where  they  exist. 
The  only  intelligent  answer  that  can  be  given 
would  be  that  they  exist  either  in  space  and 
time,  or  in  consciousness.  The  former  supposi- 


256  PERSONALISM 

tion  would  turn  them  into  things,  and  then  they 
would  dissolve  away  in  the  dialectic  of  spatial 
and  temporal  existence  ;  the  latter  is  contrary 
to  the  hypothesis,  which  is  that  they  are  pre- 
conditions of  consciousness.  Thus  they  retreat 
into  some  kind  of  metaphysical  ?2th  dimension, 
where  we  cannot  follow  them  because  they 
mean  nothing. 

A  further  difficulty  emerges  when  we  ask 
for  the  ground  of  grouping  and  movement  of 
these  ideas.  If  we  conceive  their  relations  to 
be  purely  logical  we  should  make  immediate 
speculative  shipwreck.  The  intellect  conceived 
of  as  merely  a  set  of  logical  relations  is  totally 
incapable  of  explaining  the  order  of  experi- 
ence, for  logic  is  non-temporal.  Conclusions 
coexist  with  the  premises.  There  is  no  before 
or  after  possible  in  the  case.  If,  then,  the  uni- 
verse as  existing  were  a  logical  implication  of 
ideas,  it  and  all  its  contents  would  be  as  eter- 
nal as  the  ideas.  There  would  be  no  room 
for  change,  but  all  their  implications  would 
rigidly  coexist.  In  this  view  also  finite  minds, 
with  all  their  contents,  as  implications  of  eter- 


THE   FAILURE   OF   IMPERSONALISM       257 

nal  ideas,  would  be  equally  eternal ;  and  as 
error  and  evil  are  a  manifest  part  of  these 
contents,  it  follows  that  they  likewise  are  ne- 
cessary and  eternal.  Hence  we  should  have  to 
admit  an  element  of  unreason  and  evil  in  the 
eternal  ideas  themselves ;  and  by  this  time 
the  collapse  of  the  system  would  be  complete. 
There  is  no  escape  from  this  result  so  long  as 
we  look  upon  the  intellect  as  a  logical  mech- 
anism of  ideas.  Only  a  living,  active,  personal 
intelligence  can  escape  this  fatalism  and  sui- 
cidal outcome  of  the  impersonal  reason.  A 
purely  logical  and  contemplative  intellect  tliat 
merely  gazed  upon  the  relations  of  ideas,  with- 
out choice  and  initiative  and  active  self-direc- 
tion, would  be  absolutely  useless  in  explaining 
the  order  of  life. 

The  claim  that  thought  must  comprise 
everything  is  itself  unclear  in  its  meaning.  In 
our  human  thinking  of  course  there  is  a  world 
of  objects  which  we  do  not  make  but  find,  and 
this  dualism  can  never  be  eliminated  from  our 
thinking.  But  this  world  of  objects  is  retained 
within  the  thought  sphere  by  being  made  the 


258  PERSONALISM 

product  and  expression  of  intelligence,  and  as 
such  it  is  open  to  apprehension  and  compre- 
hension by  intelligence.  But  when  it  comes 
to  the  self-knowledge  of  intelligence,  there 
is  always  an  element  which  mere  conceptual 
knowing  can  never  adequately  grasp.  We  have 
seen  that  concepts  without  immediate  experi- 
ence are  only  empty  forms,  and  become  real 
only  as  some  actual  experience  furnishes  them 
with  real  contents.  Hence  there  is  an  element 
in  self-knowledge  beyond  what  the  concep- 
tions of  the  understanding  can  furnish.  This 
is  found  in  our  living  self-consciousness.  We 
conceive  some  things,  but  we  not  only  con- 
ceive, we  also  live  ourselves.  This  living  in- 
deed cannot  be  realized  without  the  concep- 
tion, but  the  conception  is  formal  and  empty 
without  the  living.  In  this  sense  intelligence 
must  accept  itself  as  a  datum,  and  yet  not 
as  something  given  from  without,  but  as  the 
self-recognition  of  itself  by  itself.  Intelligence 
must  always  have  a  content  for  its  own  recog- 
nition. The  recognition  would  be  impossible 
without  the  content,  and  the  content  would  be 


THE   FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       259 

nothing^  without  the  recogfiiition.  In  this  fact 
the  antithesis  of  thouo-ht  and  beino-  finds  re- 
cognition  and  reconcihation  ;  but  the  fact  itself 

CD  ^ 

must  be  lived,  it  cannot  be  discursively  con- 
strued. Thouo-ht  and  act  are  one  in  this  mat- 
ter,  and  neither  can  be  construed  without  the 
other. 

In  closing  this  discussion  we  recall  once 
more  our  doctrine  of  transcendental  empiricism. 
The  meaning  and  possibility  of  these  terms 
must  finally  be  found  in  experience  itself,  and 
not  in  any  abstract  philosophizing.  When  the 
terms  are  abstractly  taken  without  continual 
reference  to  experience,  it  is  easy  to  develop 
any  number  of  difficulties  and  even  contradic- 
tions in  our  fundamental  ideas.  No  better 
proof  of  this  can  be  found  than  Mr.  Bradley's 
work  on  Appearance  and  Reality.  This  is  a 
work  of  great  ability,  but  written  from  the 
abstract  standpoint.  The  result  is  that  it 
might  almost  be  called  a  refutation  of  im- 
personalism,  although  such  refutation  was  far 
enough  from  Mr.  Bradley's  purpose.  He  finds 
all  the  categories   and   relations  of  thought 


260  PERSONALISM 

abounding  in  contradiction.  Inherence,  predi- 
cation, quality,  identity,  causality,  unity,  space, 
time,  things,  and  even  the  self,  swarm  with 
contradictions.  Mr.  Bradley  seems  to  think 
that  these  difficulties  are  all  removed  in  the 
absolute,  but  he  fails  to  see  that  his  logic 
would  pursue  him  even  into  the  absolute,  un- 
less it  be  personally  conceived.  Otherwise  the 
absolute  is  simply  a  deus  ex  macJwia  kept 
strictly  behind  the  scenes,  and  worked  only  by 
stage  direction  from  the  manager. 

But  the  difficulties  urged  by  Mr.  Bradley 
do  exist  for  all  impersonal  philosophy;  and 
they  can  be  removed  only  as  the  problem  is 
raised  to  the  personal  plane,  and  we  take  the 
terms  in  the  meaning  they  have  in  living  ex- 
perience. Thus  identity  is  entirely  intelligible 
as  the  self-identification  of  experience  in  in- 
telligence. We  can  easily  give  identity  a 
meaning  according  to  which  the  soul  is  not 
identical,  but  there  is  no  loss  in  this,  as  we  have 
no  interest  speculative  or  practical  in  such 
identity.  Again,  unity  is  entirely  intelligible 
as  the  unity  of  the  self  in  the  plurality  of  its 


THE  FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       261 

activities.  Here  again  it  is  easy  to  define  unity 
in  such  a  way  as  to  exclude  plurality ;  but 
here  also  nothing  is  lost,  for  we  have  no  in- 
terest of  any  sort  in  such  a  unity.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  other  categories.  They 
may  easily  be  defined  in  such  a  way  as  to  in- 
volve contradictions  or  make  them  worthless, 
but  philosophy  is  not  concerned  over  the  fate 
of  such  abstractions  ;  it  cares  only  to  know 
the  forms  the  categories  take  on  in  living  ex- 
perience. And  here  we  find,  as  we  pointed  out 
in  discussing  freedom,  that  many  things  which 
when  abstractly  taken  seem  contradictory  prove 
quite  compatible  in  the  concrete. 

Finally,  the  notion  of  the  self  can  easily  be 
taken  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  worthless.  We 
are  asked  of  what  use  the  self  is,  after  all,  in 
explaining  the  mental  life.  How  does  its  unity 
explain  the  plurality  and  variety  of  conscious- 
ness ?  And  the  answer  must  be  that  in  some 
sense  it  does  not  explain  it,  and  yet  the  unity 
is  no  less  necessary.  For  the  consciousness  of 
plurality  is  demonstrably  impossible  without 
the  fact  of  conscious  unity.   This  unity  does 


262  PERSONALISM 

not  indeed  enable  us  to  deduce  plurality,  and 
hence  the  plurality  must  be  viewed  as  an  as- 
pect o£  the  unity,  but  not  as  an  aspect  of  an 
abstract  unity  without  distinction  or  difference, 
but  a  living,  conscious  unity,  which  is  one  in 
its  manifoldness  and  manifold  in  its  oneness. 
Taken  verbally  this  might  easily  be  shown  to 
be  contradictory,  but  taken  concretely  it  is  the 
fact  of  consciousness,  and  none  the  less  so 
because  our  formal  and  discursive  thought 
finds  it  impossible  to  construe  it.  And  in  gen- 
eral the  self  taken  abstractly  is  indeed  worth- 
less, as  all  causes  are  on  the  impersonal  plane. 
The  law  of  the  sufficient  reason,  which  is  sup- 
posed to  demand  causation,  always  shuts  us 
up  to  barren  tautology  when  impersonally 
taken.  In  such  cases  all  our  explanations  only 
repeat  the  problem.  But  the  self  is  not  to  be 
abstractly  taken.  It  is  the  living  self  in  the 
midst  of  its  experiences,  possessing,  directing, 
controlling  both  itself  and  them ;  and  this 
self  is  not  open  to  the  objection  of  barrenness 
and  worthlessness,  being  simply  what  we  all 
experience  when  we  say  me  or  mine.   This  self 


THE  FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       263 

can  never  be  more  than  verbally  denied,  and 
even  its  verbal  deniers  have  always  retained 
the  fact.  The  language  of  the  personal  life 
would  be  impossible  otherwise. 

On  all  of  these  accounts,  then,  we  affirm 
that  impersonalism  is  a  failure  whether  in  the 
low  form  of  materialistic  mechanism  or  in  the 
abstract  form  of  idealistic  notions,  and  that 
personality  is  the  real  and  only  principle  of 
philosophy  which  will  enable  us  to  take  any 
rational  step  whatever.  We  are  not  abstract 
intellects  nor  abstract  wills,  but  we  are  living 
persons,  knowing  and  feeling  and  having  vari- 
ous interests,  and  in  the  light  of  knowledge 
and  under  the  impulse  of  our  interests  trying 
to  find  our  way,  having  an  order  of  experi- 
ence also  and  seeking  to  understand  it  and 
to  guide  ourselves  so  as  to  extend  or  enrich 
that  experience,  and  thus  to  build  ourselves 
into  larger  and  fuller  and  more  abundant  per- 
sonal life. 

The  metaphysics  of  impersonalism  is  cer- 
tainly impossible,  but  it  may  be  objected  that 


264  PERSONALISM 

personalism  itself  is  open  to  at  least  equal 
objection.  Some  of  these  have  become  tradi- 
tional and  conventional,  and  seem  to  call  for 
a  word  in  passing. 

In  cruder  thought  the  attempt  is  always 
made  to  solve  the  problem  by  picturing,  and 
this  ends  by  confounding  the  person  with  the 
physical  organism.  Of  course  it  is  easy  to 
show  that  personality  as  thus  conceived  is  im- 
possible. The  more  significant  objections  arise 
from  an  abstract  treatment  of  the  subject  and 
an  attempt  to  construe  personaHty  as  the  out- 
come of  impersonal  principles.  But  abstrac- 
tion can  do  nothing  with  the  question,  as  the 
indications  of  living  experience  are  the  only 
source  of  knowledge  in  this  matter.  Person- 
ality can  never  be  construed  as  a  product  or 
compound ;  it  can  only  be  experienced  as  a 
fact.  It  must  be  possible  because  it  is  given 
as  actual.  Whenever  we  attempt  to  go  behind 
this  fact  we  are  trying  to  explain  the  explana- 
tion. We  explain  the  objects  before  the  mir- 
ror by  the  images  which  seem  to  exist  behind 
it.    There   is   nothing   behind   the   mirror. 


THE  FAILURE   OF   IMPERSONALISM       265 

When  we  have  Hved  and  described  the  per- 
sonal Hfe  we  have  done  all  that  is  possible  in 
sane  and  sober  speculation,  I£  we  try  to  do 
more  we  only  fall  a  prey  to  abstractions.  This 
self-conscious  existence  is  the  truly  ultimate 
fact. 

Of  course  our  human  existence,  with  its 
various  limitations  and  its  temporal  form, 
readily  lends  itself  to  the  thought  that  per- 
sonality develops  out  of  the  impersonal.  If 
we  should  allow  this  to  be  the  fact  in  our  own 
case,  we  should  still  have  to  admit  that  the 
impersonal  out  of  which  our  personality  de- 
velops has  already  a  coefficient  of  personality 
as  the  condition  of  the  development.  The 
essentially  impersonal  can  never  by  any  logi- 
cal process  other  than  verbal  hocus-pocus, 
which  is  not  logical  after  all,  be  made  the 
sufficient  reason  for  a  personal  development. 
But  our  existence  does  not  really  abut  on,  or 
spring  out  of,  an  impersonal  background;  it 
rather  depends  on  the  living  will  and  purpose 
of  the  Creator.  And  its  successive  phases,  so 
far  as  we  may  use  temporal  language,  are  but 


266  PERSONALISM 

the  form  under  which  the  Supreme  Person 
produces  and  maintains  the  personal  finite 
spirit. 

The  objections  to  affirming  a  Supreme  Per- 
son are  largely  verbal.  Many  of  them  are 
directed  against  a  literal  anthropomorphism. 
This,  of  course,  is  a  man  of  straw.  Man  him- 
self in  his  essential  personality  is  as  unpic- 
turable  and  formless  as  God.  Personality  and 
corporeality  are  incommensurable  ideas.  The 
essential  meaning  of  personality  is  selfhood, 
self-consciousness,  self-control,  and  the  power 
to  know.  These  elements  have  no  corporeal 
significance  or  limitations.  Any  being,  finite 
or  infinite,  which  has  knowledge  and  self-con- 
sciousness and  self-control,  is  personal ;  for  the 
term  has  no  other  meaning.  Laying  aside, 
then,  all  thought  of  corporeal  form  and  limi- 
tation as  being  no  factor  of  personality,  we 
must  really  say  that  complete  and  perfect  per- 
sonality can  be  found  only  in  the  Infinite  and 
Absolute  Being,  as  only  in  Him  can  we  find 
that  complete  and  perfect  selfhood  and  self- 
possession  which  are  necessary  to  the  fullness 


THE  FAILURE   OF  IMPERSONALISM       2G7 

of  personality.  In  thinking,  then,  of  the  Su- 
preme Person  we  must  beware  of  transferring 
to  him  the  Hmitations  and  accidents  of  our 
human  personality,  which  are  no  necessary 
part  of  the  notion  of  personality,  and  think 
only  of  the  fullness  of  power,  knowledge,  and 
selfhood  which  alone  are  the  essential  factors 
of  the  conception. 

Thus  impersonalism  appears  as  doubly  a 
failure.  If  we  ask  for  the  positive  foundation 
of  its  basal  conceptions,  we  find  that  there  is 
none.  They  are  empty  forms  of  thought  to 
which  no  reality  can  be  shown  to  correspond, 
and  upon  criticism  they  vanish  altogether.  If 
we  next  ask  what  insight  impersonalism  gives 
into  the  problems  of  experience,  we  find 
nothing  but  tautology  and  infinite  regress. 
Such  a  theory  surely  does  not  pay  expenses. 
The  alternative  is  personalism  or  nothing. 


VI 

THE  PERSONAL  WORLD 

One  great  difficulty  in  bringing  popular 
thought  to  better  philosophical  insight  lies  in 
its  bondage  to  sense  objects.  Things  that  can 
be  seen  and  handled  are  preeminently  real,  and 
there  is  always  a  tendency  to  think  that  only 
such  things  are  real.  In  this  state  of  mind 
it  is  exceedingly  difficult  for  any  doctrine  of 
idealistic  type  even  to  get  a  hearing,  as  it 
seems  so  plainly  absurd.  Some  relief  from 
this  obsession  may  be  obtained  by  pointing 
out  how  large  a  proportion  of  our  human  life 
is  even  now  invisible  and  impalpable.  In  this 
way  the  sense-bound  mind  may  be  made  more 
hospitable  to  the  thought  of  invisible  and  non- 
spatial  existence  in  general. 

First  of  all,  we  ourselves  are  invisible.  The 
physical  organism  is  only  an  instrument  for 
expressing  and  manifesting  the  inner  life,  but 
the  living  self  is  never  seen.    For  each  person 


THE   PERSONAL   WORLD  269 

his  own  self  is  known  in  immediate  experience 
and  all  others  are  known  through  their  effects. 
They  are  not  revealed  in  form  or  shape,  but 
in  deeds,  and  they  are  known  only  in  and 
through  deeds.  In  this  respect  they  are  as 
formless  and  invisible  as  God  himself,  and 
that  not  merely  in  the  sense  of  being  out  of 
sight,  but  also  in  the  sense  of  not  lying  within 
the  sphere  of  visibility  in  any  way.  What  is 
the  shape  of  the  spirit?  or  what  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  soul?  These  questions  re- 
veal the  absurdity  of  the  notion  without  criti- 


cism. 


Indeed,  the  most  familiar  events  of  every- 
day life  have  their  key  and  meaning  only  in  the 
invisible.  If  we  observe  a  number  of  persons 
moving  along  the  street,  and  consider  them 
only  under  the  laws  of  mechanics,  and  notice 
simply  what  we  can  see  or  what  the  camera 
could  report,  the  effect  is  in  the  highest  de- 
gree grotesque.  A  kiss  or  caress  described  in 
anatomical  terms  of  the  points  of  contact  and 
muscles  involved  would  not  be  worth  having 
in  any  case,  and  would  be  unintelligible  to 


270  PERSONALISM 

most  of  us.  And  all  our  physical  attitudes 
and  movements  seem  quite  ridiculous  whenever 
we  consider  them  in  abstraction  from  their 
personal  meaning  or  the  personal  life  behind 
them.  What  could  be  more  absurd  than  a 
prayer  described  in  physical  terms  of  noise  and 
attitude,  apart  from  the  religious  meaning? 
Or  what  could  be  more  opaque  than  a  descrip- 
tion of  a  scientific  experiment  in  terms  of 
bodies  and  instruments,  apart  from  a  know- 
ledge of  the  problem  and  of  the  unseen  per- 
sons who  are  trying  to  solve  it?  But  the  gro- 
tesqueness  in  these  cases  does  not  exist  for  us, 
because  we  seldom  abstract  from  our  know- 
ledge of  personality  so  as  to  see  simply  what 
sense  can  give.  These  physical  forms  we  re- 
gard as  persons  who  are  going  somewhere  or  are 
doing-  somethino;.  There  is  a  thoug-ht  behind 
it  all  as  its  meaning  and  key,  and  so  the  matter 
seems  to  us  entirely  familiar.  Thus  out  of  the 
invisible  comes  the  meaning  that  transforms 
the  curious  sets  of  motions  into  terms  of  per- 
sonality and  gives  them  a  human  significance. 
Indeed,  our  estimate  even  of  the  body  itself 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  271 

depends  largely  upon  its  connection  with  the 
hidden  life  of  the  spiiit.  A  human  form  as  an 
object  in  space,  apart  from  our  experience  of 
it  as  the  instrument  and  expression  of  personal 
life,  would  have  httle  beauty  or  attraction ;  and 
when  it  is  described  in  anatomical  terms  there 
is  nothing  in  it  that  we  should  desire  it.  The 
secret  of  its  beauty  and  value  lies  in  the  invis- 
ible realm. 

The  same  is  true  of  literature.  It  does  not 
exist  in  space  or  time  or  books  or  libraries, 
but  solely  in  the  invisible  and  non-spatial 
world  of  ideas  and  consciousness.  A  person 
looking  for  literature  in  a  book  or  in  a  library 
would  hopelessly  err  and  stray  from  the  way, 
because  all  that  can  be  found  there  would  be 
black  marks  on  white  paper  and  collections  of 
these  bound  together  in  various  forms,  which 
would  be  all  that  eyes  could  see.  But  this 
would  not  be  literature,  for  literature  has  its 
existence  only  in  mind  and  for  mind  as  an  ex- 
pression of  mind,  and  is  simply  impossible  and 
meaningless  in  abstraction  from  mind.  Sim- 
ilarly with  history.    Our  human  history  never 


272  PERSON  ALISM 

existed  in  space  and  never  could  so  exist.  If 
some  visitor  from  Mars  should  come  to  the 
earth  and  look  at  all  that  goes  on  in  space  in 
connection  with  human  beings,  he  would  never 
get  any  hint  of  its  real  significance.  He  would 
be  confined  simply  to  integrations  and  dissi- 
pations of  matter  and  motion.  He  could  de- 
scribe the  masses  and  groupings  of  material 
things,  but  in  all  this  he  would  get  no  sugges- 
tion of  the  inner  life  which  gives  significance 
to  it  all.  As  conceivably  a  bird  might  sit  on 
a  telegraph  instrument  and  become  fully 
aware  of  the  clicks  of  the  machine  without 
any  suspicion  of  the  meaning  or  existence  of 
the  message,  or  a  dog  could  see  all  that  eyes 
can  see  in  a  book  yet  without  any  hint  of  its 
meaning,  or  a  savage  could  gaze  at  the  printed 
score  of  an  opera  without  ever  suspecting  its 
musical  import,  so  this  supposed  visitor  would 
be  absolutely  cut  off  by  an  impassable  gulf 
from  the  real  seat  and  significance  of  human 
history.  The  great  drama  of  life,  with  its  likes 
and  dislikes,  its  loves  and  hates,  its  ambitions 
and  strivings,  and  manifold  ideas,  inspirations, 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  273 

and  aspirations,  is  absolutely  foreign  to  space, 
and  could  never  be  in  any  way  discovered  in 
space.  So  human  history  has  its  seat  in  the 
invisible. 

Similarly  with  government.  The  govern- 
ment does  not  exist  in  state-houses  or  halls  of 
Congress.  It  is  a  relation  of  personal  wills,  as 
all  society  is  likewise  a  relation  of  personal 
wills,  with  their  background  of  conscious  af- 
fection, ideas,  and  purposes.  It  is  in  this  hid- 
den realm  that  we  live,  and  love  or  hate,  obey 
or  disobey,  and  live  in  peace  or  strife.  Wars 
have  not  existed  in  space,  and  real  battlefields 
are  in  the  unseen.  They  are  the  conflicts  of 
ideas,  of  aspirations,  of  mental  tendencies,  and 
all  the  fighting  that  ever  took  place  in  space 
was  but  a  symbol  and  expression  of  the  inner 
unpicturable  strife.  And  this  illustrates  what 
is  true  of  the  whole  life  of  man.  Love  and 
hate,  desire  and  aspiration,  exaltation  and  de- 
pression, the  whole  contents  of  human  life,  in 
short,  are  invisible,  and  the  spatial  is  merely 
the  means  of  expressing  and  localizing  this 
unpicturable  life ;  it   has  only  symbolical  sig- 


274  PERSONALISM 

nificance  for  the  deeper  life  behind  it.  All 
this  our  Martian  visitor  would  miss,  that  is, 
he  would  miss  man  and  his  history  alto- 
gether. 

Thus  we  see  to  what  a  large  extent  human 
life  is  now  in  the  invisible  realm,  and  that,  as 
said,  not  merely  in  the  sense  of  being  out  of 
sisfht,  but  as  somethins^  that  does  not  admit 
in  any  way  of  being  pictured.  It  may  use 
spatial  phenomena  as  a  means  of  expression, 
but  in  itself  it  is  strictly  unpicturable.  And 
for  this  great  world  of  reality,  if  we  must  have 
a  whereabouts,  we  must  say  that  not  space  but 
consciousness  is  its  seat.  These  things  belong 
not  to  a  space  world,  but  to  the  world  of  con- 
sciousness, which  is  something  very  different. 
This  is  the  seat  of  the  great  human  drama 
of  individual  life  and  of  human  history.  This 
would  be  the  case  on  any  view  of  space  what- 
ever, but  it  is  self-evidently  the  case  when  we 
view  space  as  subjective,  for  then  the  world  of 
consciousness  becomes  the  seat  of  all  worlds, 
not  merely  the  world  of  history  and  personal 
relations,  but  also  and  equally  the  seat  of  the 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  275 

world  of  space  appearance  and  the  world  of 
physical  science.  It  will  be  noted,  however, 
that  this  view  in  no  way  denies  the  reahty  of 
the  human  world.  It  merely  relocates  it.  That 
world  remains  all  that  it  was  before  and  is  just 
as  real  as  ever.  We  have  simply  discovered 
that  it  is  not  to  be  thought  of  in  phenomenal 
terms  of  space  and  time,  but  rather  in  terms 
of  itself,  in  the  incommensurable  terms  of  life 
and  feeling,  and  love  and  hate,  and  aspiration 
or  dejection,  and  hope  and  despair,  etc.  Simi- 
larly the  space  world  is  not  made  unreal  by 
this  general  view.  We  simply  mean  that  it  is 
not  a  self-sufhcient  something  by  itself,  but  is 
rather  a  means  of  expression  of  the  underly- 
ing personal  life  which  is  the  deepest  and  only 
substantial  fact. 

The  more  we  dwell  upon  this  view  the  more 
mysterious  our  life  becomes  for  the  imagina- 
tion. We  see  that  our  Hfe  now  actually  goes 
on  in  the  invisible,  and  that  space  has  only  a 
symbolical  function  with  respect  to  this  hidden 
life.  We  impress  ourselves  upon  the  spatial 
system  and  manifest  our  thought  and  purpose 


276  PERSONALISM 

in  it  and  through  it,  but  the  actors  never 
appear.  So  far  as  concerns  man,  the  space 
world  has  the  ground  of  many  of  its  deter- 
minations in  the  invisible  v^orld  of  human 
thought  and  purpose,  and  is  constantly  tak- 
ing on  more  and  more  our  human  image  and 
superscription.  In  its  relation  to  man  the 
space  world  is  largely  a  potentiality,  waiting 
for  realization  by  man  himself.  There  are 
harvests  waiting  to  grow  and  flowers  waiting 
to  bloom,  but  it  cannot  be  until  man  sets  his 
hand  to  the  work.  The  flora  and  fauna  of  the 
earth  are  increasingly  taking  their  character 
from  our  will  and  purpose.  Even  climate  itself 
is  not  independent  of  our  doings  or  misdoings. 
So  far  as  we  are  concerned,  the  space  world  is 
nothing  complete  and  finished  in  itself,  but  is 
forever  becoming;  that  which  we  will  it  to  be. 
And  when  we  recognize  our  own  invisibility 
and  the  symbolical  character  of  space  as  only 
a  means  of  expressing  our  hidden  thought 
and  life,  we  find  a  growing  hospitality  toward 
the  view  that  there  is  a  great  invisible  power 
behind  the  space  and  time  world  as  a  whole, 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  277 

which  is  using  it  for  expressing  and  communi- 
cating its  purpose. 

Unless,  then,  appearances  are  unusually 
deceitful  in  this  case,  it  is  plain  that  man  is 
no  impotent  annex  to  a  self-sufficient  mechani- 
cal system,  but  is  rather  a  very  significant  fac- 
tor in  cosmic  ongoings,  at  least  in  terrestrial 
regions.  He  is  an  inhabitant  of  the  invisible 
world,  and  projects  his  thought  and  life  on 
the  great  space  and  time  screen  which  we  call 
nature.  But  naturalism,  in  its  sense  bond- 
age, misses  all  this,  and  seeks  for  man  in  the 
picture  world  of  space  images,  where,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  he  can  never  be.  With 
this  initial  blunder,  man  becomes  less  and  less 
in  the  system,  first  a  phenomenon,  then  an 
"  epiphenomenon,"  and  finally  he  tends  to 
disappear  altogether.  Meanwhile  matter  and 
motion  go  on  integrating  and  dissipating  as 
per  schedule,  and  ^3f  V^  remains  a  constant 
quantity.  The  whole  history  of  thought  con- 
tains no  more  grotesque  inversion  of  reason. 

A  world  of  persons  with  a  Supreme  Per- 
son at  the  head  is  the  conception  to  which  we 


278  PERSONALISM 

come  as  the  result  of  our  critical  reflections. 
The  world  of  space  objects  which  we  call  na- 
ture is  no  substantial  existence  by  itself,  and 
still  less  a  self -running  system  apart  from  in- 
telligence, but  only  the  flowing  expression 
and  means  of  communication  of  those  per- 
sonal beings.  It  is  throughout  dependent,  in- 
strumental, and  phenomenal.  But  a  problem 
remains  in  the  relation  of  these  finite  spirits 
to  the  Absolute  Spirit.  This  problem  also  has 
suffered  from  an  abstract  treatment,  which  has 
led  to  many  pernicious  errors. 

Metaphysics  shows  that  we  cannot  explain 
the  existence  and  community  of  the  many 
without  affirming  a  fundamental  reality  which 
is  truly  one,  and  which  produces  and  coordi- 
nates the  many.  When  we  ask  for  the  relation 
of  the  many  to  the  one,  the  imagination  tries 
to  solve  the  problem  by  some  quantitative 
conception,  as  that  the  many  are  made  out  of 
the  one,  or  are  included  in  the  one,  as  the 
parts  are  included  in  the  whole.  The  multi- 
tudinous suo['o;'estions  of  this  kind  are  set  aside 
by  the  insight  that  these  quantitative  ideas 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  279 

are  incompatible  with  the  true  unity  o£  the 
one.  Metaphysics  shows  that  the  fundamental 
reality  must  be  conceived  not  as  an  extended 
stuff,  but  as  an  agent  to  which  the  notion  of 
divisibility  has  no  application.  When  we  fur- 
ther recall  that  this  agent  must  be  regarded 
as  self-conscious  intelligence,  the  untenability 
of  any  quantitative  conception  becomes  self- 
evident.  The  conception  of  the  many  as  made 
out  of  the  one,  or  as  resulting  from  any  fission 
or  self-diremption  of  the  one,  or  as  being  the 
parts  of  the  one,  —  its  "internally  cherished 
parts,"  —  is  seen  at  once  to  be  an  attempt  of 
the  uncritical  imagination  to  express  an  unpic- 
turable  problem  of  the  reason  in  the  picture 
forms  of  the  spatial  fancy.  When  these  reflec- 
tions are  continued,  we  reach  the  result  that 
the  unpicturable  many  must  be  conceived  as 
unpicturably  depending  on  the  unpicturable 
one. 

This  result  has  been  perhorresced  by  many 
able  thinkers  in  recent  times  as  committing 
us  to  a  destructive  and  pernicious  pantheism, 
and  they  have  taken  refuge  in  an  impossible 


280  PERSONALISM 

pluralism.  Some  have  gone  so  far  as  to  hold 
that  the  many  have  always  existed,  as  the 
only  means  of  rescuing  finite  personality.  But 
surely  this  is  to  throw  the  child  out  with  the 
bath.  The  dangers  against  which  these  think- 
ers protest  are  indeed  real,  and  their  perni- 
cious character  is  clearly  seen  in  the  Vedanta 
philosophy  of  India.  But  there  is  no  reUef  in 
such  a   despairing   pluralism.     The   way  out 
must  be  sought  in  a  careful  scrutiny  of  our 
terms  and  a  resolute  adherence  to  experience 
itself  in  its  form  of  transcendental  empiricism. 
It  would  be  easy  to  fall  into  pantheism  at 
this  point  by  emphasizing  the  dependence  of 
the  finite  spirit,  or  by  taking  that  dependence 
in  an  abstract  and  absolute  sense.    We  must 
guard  against  this  by  observing  that  words  here 
can  never  be  adequately  defined  by  the  diction- 
ary, but  only  by  carefully  noting  the  facts  they 
are  meant  to  express.    Now  when  we  consider 
our  life  at  all  critically,  we  come  upon  two  facts. 
First,  we  have  thoughts  and  feelings  and  voli- 
tions which  are  inahenably  our  own.    We  also 
have  a  measure  of  self-control,  or  the  power 


THE   PERSONAL  WORLD  281 

of  self-direction.  Here,  then,  we  find  in  our 
experience  a  certain  selfhood  and  a  relative 
independence.  This  fact  constitutes  our  per- 
sonality. The  second  fact  is  that  we  cannot 
regard  ourselves  as  self-sufficient  and  inde- 
pendent in  any  absolute  sense.  And  a  further 
fact  is  that  we  cannot  interpret  our  life  with- 
out admitting  both  of  these  facts,  and  that  to 
deny  either  lands  us  in  contradiction  and  non- 
sense. Now  our  independence  means  just  that 
experienced  limited  self-control ;  and  our  de- 
pendence means  just  that  experienced  lack 
of  self-sufficiency.  How  these  two  aspects  of 
experience  can  be  combined  in  the  same  being 
we  cannot  tell,  any  more  than  we  can  tell  how 
freedom  and  uniformity  can  be  united  in  the 
same  beings.  But  we  find  them  thus  united 
nevertheless.  It  is  only  as  we  take  the  ideas 
abstractly  that  we  find  them  contradictory  ; 
what  they  may  be  in  reality  can  be  learned 
only  from  experience.  We  have  no  insight 
whatever  into  real  possibility  or  impossibility 
which  will  enable  us  to  decide  one  way  or 
the  other  apart  from  experience.  The  depend- 


282  PERSONALISM 

ence,  then,  of  the  finite  spirit,  in  the  sense 
of  its  non-self-sufficiency,  does  not  prove  its 
nothingness  or  unreahty ;  and  this  depend- 
ence, as  said,  must  be  interpreted  by  the  facts 
and  not  by  the  dictionary.  It  is  permitted  to 
mean  only  what  we  find  it  to  mean  in  living 
experience. 

The  pantheistic  view,  on  the  other  hand,  has 
insuperable  difficulties.  The  problem  of  know- 
ledge, we  have  before  seen,  is  insoluble  except 
as  we  maintain  the  freedom  of  both  the  finite 
and  the  infinite  spirit.  That  all  things  depend 
on  God  is  a  necessary  affirmation  of  thought, 
but  that  all  things  and  thoughts  and  activities 
are  divine  is  unintelligible  in  the  first  place, 
and  self-destructive  in  the  next.  That  God 
should  know  our  thoughts  and  feelings  and 
should  perfectly  understand  and  appreciate 
them  is  quite  intelligible,  but  that  our  thoughts 
and  feelings  are  his  in  any  other  sense  is  a 
psychological  contradiction.  If,  however,  we 
insist  on  so  saying,  then  reason  simply  commits 
suicide.  It  is  God  who  thinks  and  feels  in  our 
thinking  and  feeling,  and  hence  it  is  God  who 


THE   PERSONAL   WORLD  283 

blunders  in  our  blundering  and  is  stupid  incur 
stupidity,  and  it  is  God  who  contradicts  him- 
self in  the  multitudinous  inconsistencies  of 
our  thinking.  Thus  error,  folly,  and  sin  are 
all  made  divine,  and  reason  and  conscience  as 
having  authority  vanish. 

In  addition  to  these  difficulties  the  divine 
unity  itself  disappears.  What  is  God's  relation 
as  thinking  our  thoughts  to  God  as  thinking 
the  absolute  and  perfect  thought  ?  Does  he 
become  limited,  confused,  and  blind  in  finite 
experience,  and  does  he  at  the  same  time  have 
perfect  insight  in  his  infinite  life  ?  Does  he 
lose  himself  in  the  finite  so  as  not  to  know 
what  and  who  he  is,  or  does  he  perhaps  ex- 
haust himself  in  the  finite  so  that  the  finite  is 
all  there  is  ?  But  if  all  the  while  he  has  per- 
fect knowledofe  of  himself  as  one  and  infinite, 
how  does  this  illusion  of  the  finite  arise  at  all 
in  that  perfect  unity  and  perfect  light  ?  There 
is  no  answer  to  these  questions  so  long  as  the 
Infinite  is  supposed  to  play  both  sides  of  the 
game.  We  have  a  series  of  unaccountable  il- 
lusions, and  an  infinite  playing  hide  and  seek 


284  PERSONALISM 

•with  itself  in  a  most  grotesque  metaphysical 
fuddlement.  Such  an  infinite  is  nothing  but 
the  shadow  of  speculative  delirium.  These 
difficulties  can  never  be  escaped  so  long  as 
we  seek  to  identify  the  finite  and  the  infinite. 
Their  mutual  otherness  is  necessary  if  we  are  to 
escape  the  destruction  of  all  thought  and  life.^ 
This  mutual  otherness  is  equally  demanded 
by  the  moral  and  religious  relation  which  we 
have  next  to  consider.  Pantheism  is  not  a  re- 
ligion, but  an  inconsistent  philosophical  specu- 
lation. Religfion  demands  the  mutual  otherness 
of  the  finite  and  infinite,  in  order  that  the  rela- 
tion of  love  and  obedience  may  obtain.  Both 
love  and  religion  seek  for  union,  but  it  is  not 
the  union  of  absorption  or  fusion,  but  rather 
the  union  of  mutual  understanding  and  sym- 
pathy, which  would  disappear  if  the  otherness 
of  the  persons  were  removed.  Any  intelligible 
or  desirable  longing  after  God  or  identifi- 
cation with  him  would  vanish  if  we  should 
"  confound  the  persons."  The  extravagant 
language  of  mysticism  on  this  point  is  the 

'  See  Author's  Metaphysics,  revised  edition,  p.  102. 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  285 

expression  of  religious  desire,  and  is  never  to 
be  literally  taken. 

The  metaphysical  relation  of  dependence  in 
itself  has  no  religious  quality.  It  applies  to  all 
finite  things  alike,  and  is  compatible  with  com- 
plete lack  of  spiritual  sympathy  and  fellowship, 
as  it  equally  comprises  both  the  good  and  the 
bad.  But  while  it  does  not  imply  a  religious 
relation,  it  is  nevertheless  a  pre-condition  of  it. 
There  would  be  no  religion  in  a  world  of  self- 
sufficient  beings.  The  religious  relation,  then, 
is  something  superinduced  upon  the  more  gen- 
eral relation  of  dependence. 

In  general,  the  question  of  religion  has  a 
much  better  standing  in  the  intellectual  world 
than  it  had  years  ago.  The  sensational  philo- 
sophy long  held  that  religion,  as  a  late  growth, 
is  to  be  understood  through  its  psychological 
antecedents  as  a  product  of  evolution.  Thus 
it  was  largely  regarded  as  an  adventitious  ex- 
crescence upon  human  nature  and  without  any 
real  significance  for  human  life,  and  many 
held  that  it  would  be  a  decided  gain  for  hu- 
manity, and  especially  for  the  treasury,  if  re- 


286  PERSONALISM 

ligion  could  be  finally  exorcised.  In  all  this  the 
essential  ambiguity  of  empirical  and  evolution 
doctrine  was  completely  overlooked,  and  it  was 
assumed  as  a  matter  of  course  that  that  which 
was  temporally  first  in  psychological  develop- 
ment was  the  truly  real,  or  the  material  out  of 
which  all  later  developments  were  made.  Ac- 
cordingly, as  the  earlier  phases  of  religion,  like 
the  earlier  phases  of  all  things  human,  were 
pretty  crude,  it  was  supposed  that  these  were 
the  true  originals  and  essential  meaning  of 
religion.  Now  all  this  has  passed  away.  We 
have  come  to  see  that  this  historical  study  at 
best  could  give  only  the  order  of  temporal 
development,  without  deciding  whether  there 
was  not  some  immanent  law  underlying  the 
unfolding.  We  have  equally  come  to  see  that 
no  development  is  possible  without  assuming 
such  a  law,  and  that  the  true  nature  of  a  de- 
veloping thing  can  be  learned,  not  by  looking 
at  the  crude  beginnings,  but  only  by  studying 
the  full  unfolding  of  the  finished  product.  If 
we  would  know  what  intelligence  is,  we  must 
consider  it  in  its  mighty  works  and  not  in  its 


THE   PERSONAL   WORLD  287 

first,  blind  gropings.  So  if  we  would  know 
what  religion  is,  we  must  consider  it  in  its 
great  historical  manifestations,  rather  than  in 
the  dim  imaginings  of  undeveloped  men. 

On  all  these  accounts  religion  has  come  to 
be  recognized  as  a  great  human  fact.  It  is  not 
an  invention  of  priests  or  politicians,  nor  an 
unimportant  annex  of  life,  but  it  is  deep  rooted 
in  humanity  itself.  Neither  is  it  something 
that  has  significance  only  for  the  future  life; 
for  religion  is  clearly  seen  to  have  profound 
significance  for  this  life,  either  for  good  or 
evil.  There  are  religions  that  debase  and  de- 
file; there  are  religions  that  industrially  cripple 
and  politically  paralyze  the  people.  The  forces 
that  make  for  evil  or  for  obstruction  have 
in  many  cases  incarnated  themselves  in  the 
people's  religion,  and  there  can  be  little  in- 
dustrial progress,  or  social  development,  or  po- 
litical improvement,  until  the  grip  of  these 
religions  has  been  broken.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  religion  may  be  a  great  source  of  pro- 
gress, of  illumination,  of  inspiration,  both  for 
the   individual    and    for    the    people.     This 


288  PERSONALISM 

changed  point  of  view  is  everywhere  apparent 
to  one  acquainted  with  the  course  of  thought 
in  the  last  twenty-five  years.  I  never  so  fully 
realized  it  before  as  I  did  at  the  World's  Fair 
in  St.  Louis.  I  attended  there  an  International 
Congress  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  the  members  of 
which  were  scholars  from  all  over  the  civil- 
ized world,  and  I  was  greatly  impressed  by  the 
fact  that  whenever  religion  was  mentioned,  or 
whenever  any  question  arose  that  directly  or 
indirectly  bore  upon  it,  the  references  to  re- 
ligion were  all  of  a  friendly  kind.  It  was  taken 
for  granted  as  a  great  human  fact,  as  a  fact 
in  which  human  nature  culminates,  and  as  a 
fact  having  the  same  warrant  as  all  other  hu- 
man facts.  It  is  to  be  studied  sympathetically, 
therefore,  and  with  an  open  mind.  This  is 
indeed  progress. 

It  is  equally  gratifying  to  note  that  the 
Christian  attitude  also  toward  the  non-Chris- 
tian religions  has  greatly  changed  in  recent 
years.  Christians  themselves  have  been  slow 
in  understanding  the  truth  and  glory  of  the 
Gospel,  the  good  news  of  God.  For  a  long 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  289 

time  it  was  held  that  God  was  good  only  to 
those  to  whom  the  Christian  revelation  had 
come,  and  that  all  others  were  uncondition- 
ally lost.  But  at  last  we  have  learned  that 
God  is  not  made  good  by  the  Christian  reve- 
lation, but  only  declared  and  shown  to  be 
good ;  he  has  always  been  good ;  he  has 
always  been  the  Father  Almighty,  ^nd  has 
always  had  purposes  of  grace  concerning  his 
children,  whether  they  knew  him  or  not. 
The  insufferable  blasphemy  that  condemned 
the  whole  non-Christian  world  indiscriminately 
has  utterly  disappeared  among  intelligent 
Christians.  The  God  who  has  been  dealing 
with  all  past  generations  is  the  God  of  grace 
whom  our  Lord  has  revealed,  and  they  are 
still  in  his  hands,  whether  in  this  world  or  in 
any  other. 

Similarly,  Christian  thought  has  changed 
concerning  the  great  outlying  non-Christian 
systems.  These  also  were  thought  at  one 
time  to  be  evil  and  only  evil,  and  without  any 
value  whatever  for  their  adherents.  Accord- 
ingly, it  was  the  fashion  to  deride  and  decry 


290  PERSONALISM 

these  religions,  to  emphasize  their  shortcom- 
ings and  faihires,  and  to  oppose  to  tbem 
Christianity  in  its  ideal  form.  But  further 
study  has  revealed  how  unjust  all  this  was, 
and  now  we  have  come  to  believe  that  the 
great  non-Christian  systems  also  had  their 
place  in  God's  providential  plan  for  men.  We 
find  it  possible  to  think  of  Confucius,  Men- 
cius,  and  Buddha,  and  many  another  as  veri- 
table prophets  of  the  Most  High,  and  as  hav- 
ing done  an  important  work  among  the  people 
for  whom  they  wrought ;  not  indeed  making 
anything  perfect,  but  preparing  the  way  and 
contributing  much  to  the  organization  and 
development  of  the  people.  And  this,  too, 
should  not  surprise,  still  less  offend,  any 
Christian,  for  we  are  told  that  "  a  portion  of 
the  Spirit  is  given  to  every  man,"  that  "there 
is  a  light  which  lighteth  every  man  that  com- 
eth  into  the  world  ; "  that  "  God  is  no  respec- 
ter of  persons,  but  that  in  every  nation  he 
that  feareth  God  and  worketh  righteousness 
is  accepted  of  him."  With  this  faith  and  our 
conviction  that  the  world  always  has  been  in 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  291 

the  hands  of  God,  we  are  not  surprised  but 
rather  delighted  to  find  traces  of  divine  guid- 
ance and  inspiration  in  other  than  Christian 
lands  ;  and  when  we  read  the  Sacred  Books  of 
the  East  we  rejoice  to  find  indications  of  the 
Holy  Spirit's  presence.  This  does  not  mean, 
of  course,  that  these  systems  are  perfect  or 
final;  on  the  contrary,  criticism  shows  how 
far  from  perfect  they  are,  and  that  they  never 
could  build  humanity  into  its  best  estate ;  but 
it  does  mean  that  God  has  not  been  absent 
from  the  religious  history  of  the  race,  and  has 
never  left  himself  anywhere  without  a  wit- 
ness. The  sun  does  not  envy  the  stars,  yet 
they  disappear  in  the  brightness  of  its  shin- 
ing; so  Christianity  does  not  envy  any  of 
these  lesser  lights,  but  gathers  up  into  itself 
all  their  illumination  so  that  they,  too,  disap- 
pear in  the  brightness  of  its  shining.  And  if 
one  should  point  to  the  aberrations  of  these 
other  religions  in  disproof  of  this  view,  the 
obvious  remark  is  that  Christianity  itself  has 
gone  astray  in  not  a  few  times  and  places, 
sinking  now  and  then  to  as  utter   supersti- 


292  PERSONALISM 

tion  as  could  be  found  in  sorcery  or  incanta- 
tion. 

Any  one  inclined  to  emphasize  as  decisive 
the  failure  of  the  non-Christian  religions  to 
reach  their  ideal  might  profitably  reflect  on 
the  history  of  the  Christian  churches  of  west- 
ern Asia  and  northeastern  Africa,  or  on  the 
religious  rabble  that  gather  and  fight,  except 
as  restrained  by  Turkish  soldiery,  about  the 
church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre. 

So,  then,  religion  also  is  a  fact  of  human 
experience,  and  must  receive  its  recognition 
and  interpretation  as  belonging  to  reality. 
This  fact  preeminently  leads  to  a  personal 
conception  of  existence.  Pantheism,  as  said, 
is  a  philosophy  rather  than  a  religion,  and 
whenever  it  is  held  as  a  philosophy  the  need 
of  personality  soon  vindicates  itself  by  some 
form  of  polytheism.  We  must  now  consider 
the  direction  the  normal  development  of  re- 
ligion must  take. 

Religion  can  begin  with  almost  nothing, 
but  it  can  have  a  normal  unfolding  only  un- 
der appropriate  conditions.  Religion  is  no  sim- 


THE   PERSONAL  WORLD  293 

pie  and  changeless  thing,  but  it  is  a  func- 
tion of  our  whole  nature  and  varies  with  our 
development.  Intellect,  heart,  conscience,  and 
will  alike  contribute  to  our  religious  concep- 
tions. Hence  when  there  is  little  mental  or 
moral  development  the  religious  instinct  can 
cling  to  a  stick  or  a  stone  or  some  low  and 
hideous  animal.  But  as  life  unfolds  and  intel- 
lect is  clarified  and  conscience  becomes  reg- 
nant in  our  religious  thinking,  it  then  appears 
that  there  are  certain  conditions  that  must 
be  met  by  any  religion  that  is  to  command 
the  assent  of  developed  humanity.  First  of 
all,  the  object  worshiped  must  be  something 
which  satisfies  the  intellect.  As  I  have  just 
said,  when  intellect  is  asleep  almost  anything 
can  be  made  a  religious  object,  but  when  in- 
tellect is  awake  and  alert  and  thought  has 
done  its  work,  it  then  becomes  impossible  for 
the  intellect  to  worship  any  being  lower  than 
the  Highest.  Religion  in  idea  aims  at  the  per- 
fect, and  will  have  the  perfect  or  nothing. 
When  our  insight  is  scanty  we  may  content 
ourselves  with    very  imperfect  notions;  but 


294  PERSONALISM 

when  once  the  larger  vision  comes,  the  older 
conception  must  either  be  abandoned  or  must 
be  enlarged  to  meet  the  newer  insight.  This 
fact  does  away  with  all  low  superstitions  ;  they 
flourish  only  in  the  darkness  of  ignorance. 
But  when  the  mind  has  been  nourished  on 
the  great  truths  of  science,  the  great  revela- 
tions of  world  study  and  historical  and  philo- 
sophical study,  it  becomes  simply  impossible 
for  that  mind  to  rest  in  any  of  the  forms  of 
polytheism  and  idolatry.  Such  a  mind  may 
make  the  motions  of  religion  for  selfish  or 
other  reasons,  but  it  never  really  worships  in 
any  temple  where  the  god  is  lower  than  the 
Highest.  And  if  it  be  said  that  these  images, 
etc.,  are  but  symbols,  the  answer  is  the  same. 
No  developed  mind  can  find  any  worthy  sym- 
bol of  the  Hiofhest  in  animal  forms  and  idola- 
trous  rites  and  practices.  The  intellect  stands 
in  such  a  temple  either  silent  or  scoffing,  and 
this  is  equally  true  whether  the  temple  be 
Christian  or  non-Christian.  Intellect  has  its 
inalienable  rights  in  religion  ;  and  when  they 
are  not  regarded,  religion   is  sure,  sooner  or 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  295 

later,  to  grovel  in  abject  and  paralyzing  super- 
stition. The  history  of  the  Christian  religion 
furnishes  abundant  illustration. 

And  equally  religious  development  must  take 
the  direction  of  affirming  not  only  a  supreme 
reason  but  also  a  supreme  righteousness.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  humanity  has  been  distress- 
ingly slow  in  uniting  the  ethical  and  religious 
ideal,  and  historically  there  has  been  a  great 
deal  of  religion  that  was  either  non-ethical  or 
immoral,  the  two  factors,  the  religious  and  the 
ethical,  being  brought  into  no  vital  union.  We 
see  this  in  both  the  ethnic  religions  and  the 
non-Christian  universal  religions,  and  we  see  it 
also  even  in  Christian  lands.  A  great  many 
people  who  are  nominally  Christians  and  who 
verily  believe  themselves  to  be  really  such, 
seem  to  have  little  thought  that  their  religion 
makes  any  demands  upon  their  conscience  and 
that  it  should  root  and  result  in  righteousness. 
Mechanical  devices  of  ritual  and  the  repetition 
of  verbal  forms  appear  to  be  the  sum  of  their 
religion.  They  differ  from  other  idolaters,  not 
in  the  spirit  of  their  worship,  but  in  the  acci- 


296  PERSONALISM 

dent  of  its  form.  But  there  can  be  as  genuine 
idolatry  with  words  and  phrases  as  with  wood 
or  stone  images.  "■  God  is  a  spirit,  and  they 
that  worship  him  must  worship  him  in  spirit 
and  in  truth."  "  He  hath  showed  thee,  0  man, 
what  is  good  ;  and  what  doth  the  Lord  require 
of  thee,  but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  kindness, 
and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God  ?  "  These 
great  words  strike  with  doom  all  superstitions 
and  all  immoral  and  mechanical  religion.  It  is 
manifest  that  nothing  can  claim  to  be  the  per- 
fect religion  in  which  the  religious  and  ethi- 
cal factors  are  not  indissolubly  blended.  The 
failure  to  unite  these  two  factors  is  the  great 
source  of  the  hideous  and  destructive  aberra- 
tions that  have  defiled  religious  history  and 
made  many  religions  the  enemies  of  humanity. 
All  these  must  wither  away  under  the  rebuk- 
ing gaze  of  the  develoj^ed  intellect  and  con- 
science. 

And  not  only  must  the  object  of  worship 
be  supreme  reason  and  supreme  righteousness, 
it  must  also  be  supreme  goodness.  This  is  a 
continuation  of  the  somewhat  negative  con- 


THE   PERSONAL   WORLD  297 

ception  of  righteousness  into  the  positive  con- 
ception of  ethical  love.  It  is  at  this  point 
that  relisfious  thinkinsf  has  often  est  come 
short.  If  God  is  to  be  of  any  religious  value  to 
us  and  an  object  of  real  and  adoring  worship, 
he  must  be  supremely  good.  This  demand 
has  by  no  means  always  been  understood, 
and  in  consequence  we  find  a  kind  of  sub- 
conscious effort  in  religious  development  to 
think  a  truly  ethical  thought  about  God  in 
connection  with  a  world  like  this.  The  outly- 
ing religions  have  largely  conceived  God  as 
indifferent  and  selfish.  The  gods  of  Epicurus 
were  deaf  or  indifferent  to  human  sorrow. 
The  God  of  philosophy  has  largely  been  of 
the  same  sort,  a  kind  of  absolute  metaphysi- 
cal being,  with  no  active  moral  quality,  or  if 
moral  at  all,  in  an  abstract  and  unreal  way. 
Likewise  the  God  of  theology  for  a  long  time 
hardly  attained  to  any  real  active  goodness, 
such  as  the  thought  of  ethical  "love  implies. 
This  God,  too,  was  rather  metaphysically  con- 
ceived, and  his  holiness  consisted  mainly  in 
making  rules  for  men  and  in  punishing  their 


298  PERSONALISM 

transgression.  He  was  conceived  largely  after 
the  fashion  of  the  medieval  despot,  and  the 
conception  of  any  obligation  on  his  part  to 
his  creatures  would  have  been  looked  upon 
almost  as  blasphemy.  But  now  we  have  begun 
to  think  more  clearly  and  profoundly  as  to 
what  ethical  love  demands,  and  with  this 
thought  the  immoral,  selfish,  and  indifferent 
gods  have  disappeared,  and  the  God  of  theo- 
logy, also,  has  been  greatly  modified.  We  see 
that  the  law  of  love  applies  to  power  as  well 
as  to  weakness,  that  the  strong  ought  to  bear 
the  burdens  of  the  weak  and  not  to  please 
themselves ;  that  the  greatest  of  all  must  be 
the  servant  of  all,  and  the  chief  of  burden 
bearers.  This  insight  has  already  wrought  a 
great  change  in  our  traditional  theology,  and 
the  end  is  not  yet.  We  are  no  longer  con- 
tent with  an  absolute  being  selfishly  enjoying 
himself,  or  with  a  simply  benevolent  being 
who  gives  gifts  to  men  at  no  cost  to  himself. 
Such  a  being  falls  below  the  moral  heroes  of 
our  race,  and  even  below  the  ordinary  man  and 
woman  who  live  lives  of  devotion  and  sacri- 


I 


THE   PERSONAL  WORLD  299 

fice.  We  cannot  worship  any  being  who  falls 
below  our  human  ideals  of  love  and  good- 
ness. 

It  is  but  an  extension  of  the  same  thought 
to  add  that  the  final  religion  must  be  one  that 
has  a  worthy  thought  of  man,  and  provides  a 
task  for  hun  which  will  furnish  the  will  with 
an  adequate  object  and  a  supreme  inspiration. 
We  might  conceivably  get  along  without  any 
religion,  but  when  thought  is  once  awake  we 
see  that  a  religion  which  is  to  command  our 
lives  must  be  one  which  brings  man  also  to 
his  highest  estate.  We  cannot  believe  in  man 
without  beUeving  in  God,  and  we  cannot  be- 
lieve in  God  without  believing  in  man.  God's 
goodness  itself  would  disappear  if  the  religion 
did  not  mean  our  highest  life  and  blessing ; 
and  if  our  life  is  to  end  with  the  visible  scene 
and  we  are  to  be  cast  aside  hke  the  worn-out 
straw  sandals  of  the  coolies,  then  religion  it- 
self collapses ;  the  universe  is  a  failure,  and 
God  is  a  failure,  too.  It  is  not  a  selfish  interest 
on  our  part  which  dictates  thoughts  like  this. 
It  is  rather  the  desire  to  think  worthily  of 


300  PERSONALISM 

God  and  of  his  work,  and  that  is  impossible 
so  long  as  we  fail  to  think  worthily  of  man 
and  of  his  destiny  in  God's  plan. 

Here  again  the  non-Christian  religions  have 
largely  come  short :  they  have  not  been  able 
to  think  consistently,  and  in  such  a  way  as  to 
carry  conviction,  of  the  destiny  of  man.  They 
have  wavered  between  annihilation  and  a 
dreary  round  of  undesirable  existence,  with 
no  power  to  awe  or  attract.  And  here  again 
Christianity  is  a  revelation  of  supreme  signifi- 
cance and  magnificent  audacity.  Looked  at 
from  the  outside  we  are  animals  like  the  other 
animals,  having  the  human  form,  indeed,  and 
yet  subject  to  the  same  general  laws  as  the 
animal  world,  —  birth  and  death,  hunger  and 
pain,  labor  and  weariness.  But  our  Christian 
faith  holds  that  this  is  only  the  outward  ap- 
pearance, not  the  inward  spiritual  fact.  We 
are  now  the  children  of  God,  and  it  doth  not 
yet  appear  what  we  shall  be,  but  we  know 
that  when  he  shall  appear  we  shall  be  like 
him,  for  we  shall  see  him  as  he  is.  And  thus 
our  life  is  transformed.  We  are  not  simply  the 


THE  PERSONAL   WORLD  301 

highest  in  the  animal  world,  we  are  also  and 
more  essentially  children  of  the  Highest,  made 
in  his  image  likewise,  and  to  go  on  forever- 
more  with  him  ;  made,  as  the  old  catechism 
had  it,  to  glorify  God  and  to  enjoy  him  for- 
ever, growing  evermore  into  his  likeness  and 
into  ever  deepening  sympathy  and  fellow- 
ship with  the  eternal  as  we  go  on  through 
the  unending  years,  until  we  are  "  filled  with 
all  the  fullness  of  God."  This  is  the  true 
evolution.  Man  is  making,  he  is  not  yet 
made. 

"  All  about  him  shadow  still,  but,  while  the  races  flower  and 

fade, 
Prophet   eyes   may  catch   a   glory  slowly  gaining   on   the 

shade." 

There  is  darkness  enough  in  the  valleys, 
no  doubt,  but  there  is  also  a  gleam  upon  the 
hills  and  a  glow  in  the  upper  air. 

These  are  great  dreams.  They  are  not 
dreams  that  speculation  can  justify,  neither 
are  they  dreams  that  speculation  can  discredit. 
They  are  rooted  in  the  spiritual  nature  and 
historical  life  of  our  race.  If  criticism  denies 
knowledge  it  equally  overthrows  unbelief,  and 


302  PERSONALISM 

leaves  all  room  for  belief  if  life  and  its  un- 
folding- needs  point  that  way.  This  is  no  small 
service.  This  is  not  a  machine  and  dead  world, 
but  a  world  of  life  and  personality  and  morals 
and  religion  ;  and  in  such  a  world  it  is  per- 
mitted to  see  visions  and  dream  dreams,  to 
form  ideals  and  live  in  their  inspiration,  and 
to  venture  beyond  knowledge  in  obedience 
to  those  "  high  instincts  "  which  have  always 
been,  and  still  remain,  the  "  fountain  hght "  of 
all  our  spiritual  day. 

Reference  was  made  in  the  beginning  to 
Comte's  doctrine  of  the  three  stages  of  human 
thought,  —  the  theological,  the  metaphysical, 
and  the  positive.  Comte  held  that  the  first  two 
must  disappear,  and  only  the  last  remain.  He 
was  right  as  respects  the  abstract  metaphysical, 
but  we  retain  the  other  two.  We  are  positivists 
in  respect  to  science,  and  theologians  as  re- 
spects causation.  This  view  conserves  and  sat- 
isfies all  our  essential  human  interests  in  this 
field,  and  vacates  a  mass  of  impersonal  philo- 
sophizing which  criticism  shows  to  be  baseless, 


THE   PERSONAL  WORLD  303 

and  which  in  experience  has  often  proved  itself 
to  be  an  enemy  of  humanity. 

And  now  I  wish,  with  expressions  of  apology 
for  the  repetition  it  will  involve,  to  consider 
the  practical  bearing  and  application  of  per- 
sonalism  in  dealing  with  our  concrete  problems. 
The  abstract  method,  with  its  resulting  abstrac- 
tions, has  taken  such  hold  of  popular  thinking 
that  no  single  exhortation  will  serve  to  root  it 
out. 

We  have  again  and  again  pointed  out  that 
experience  is  first  and  basal  in  all  living  and 
thinking,  and  that  all  theorizing  must  go  out 
from  experience  as  its  basis,  and  must  return 
to  it  for  verification.  With  this  understanding, 
we  see  that  science  of  the  saner  and  deeper 
type  is  in  no  way  disturbed  by  our  phenome- 
naUstic  teaching.  We  know  that  there  are 
various  ways  of  behavior  among  things,  or 
ways  of  being  and  happening  among  the  facts 
of  experience,  and  that  science  has  the  func- 
tion of  investigating  these,  and  of  discover- 
ing, describing,  and  registering  them  for  the 
guidance  of  life.  This  study  can  go  on  practi- 


304  PERSONALISM 

cally  on  the  basis  of  any  metaphysical  scheme ; 
for  even  our  metaphysics,  while  of  use  in  un- 
derstanding life,  does  not  really  in  any  way 
make  or  modify  it.  As  was  pointed  out  in  our 
first  lecture,  if  we  should  become  nihilists  or 
agnostics  it  would  not  alter  the  way  in  which 
things  actually  do  hang  together  in  the  order 
of  experience,  and  would  leave  the  practical 
work  of  life  untouched.  What  would  really 
follow  in  that  case  would  be  simply  that  by 
way  of  speculation  we  could  not  interpret  life, 
but  life  itself  with  its  practical  expectations 
and  their  practical  verifications  in  experience 
would  still  remain,  and  we  should  be  practi- 
cally no  worse  off  than  before.  The  only  thing 
that  is  forbidden  by  our  general  view  is  sci- 
ence as  a  dogmatic  system,  which,  however,  is 
not  science,  but  merely  a  species  of  philosophy 
without  foundation. 

As  was  said  in  treating  of  empiricism  and 
apriorism,  both  doctrines  leave  a  very  impor- 
tant question  untouched,  namely,  whether  the 
order  of  life  can  be  practically  depended  upon. 
No  system  of  philosophy  gives  any  answer  to 


THE   PERSONAL   WORLD  305 

this  except  a  dogmatic  one,  which  simply  mis- 
takes the  monotonies  of  dogmatic  thinking 
for  the  fundamental  laws  of  existence.  Our 
view,  therefore,  leaves  science  in  no  worse 
plight  than  it  is  on  any  other  scheme  of 
thought.  The  practical  trustworthiness  of  hfe 
can  be  learned  only  from  experience  and 
verified  only  in  experience.  When  then  our 
affirmations  respecting  the  order  of  nature 
are  far  and  permanently  removed  from  any 
practical  bearing,  they  must  become  vague 
and  insecure.  This  insight  must  be  regarded 
as  a  distinct  advance  in  philosophical  reflec- 
tion. Those  dogmatic  systems  that  deal  with 
the  infinities  and  eternities  never  had  any 
proper  foundation,  as  Kant  taught  us  to  see, 
and  they  were  continual  sources  of  theoretical 
onslaughts  on  the  practical  interests  of  life. 
It  is  therefore  something  to  be  clear  of  them. 
At  the  same  time  all  fruitful  practical  science 
remains  untouched.  We  may  go  on  looking 
for  the  uniformities  among  things  and  events, 
and  applying  the  knowledge  thus  gained  to 
the  control  of  life,  with  all  practical  confi- 


306  PERSONALISM 

dence.  Yet  we  must  always  remember  that 
the  space  and  time  world  of  phenomena  roots 
in  a  mysterious  world  of  power,  and  that  we 
must  therefore  refrain  from  erecting  our  space 
and  time  system  into  anything  absolute  and 
self-contained. 

The  question  of  the  warrant  of  knowledge 
has  never  been  conceived  with  perfect  clear- 
ness. The  debate  between  the  empirical  and 
the  apriori  school  has  been  carried  on  on  the 
assumption  that  the  validity  of  knowledge 
absolutely  depended  upon  it.  This  is  only 
partly  true.  There  are  two  questions  at  issue 
between  these  schools,  — the  form,  and  the  val- 
idity of  knowledge  ;  and  these  two  are  to  some 
extent  independent.  The  empiricist  seeks  to 
explain  the  subjective  form  of  knowledge  by 
the  association  of  sensations,  and  here  his 
failure  is  complete.  The  rationalist  rightly 
points  out  that  the  form  of  experience,  even 
as  mental  fact  and  without  any  reference  to 
its  validity,  cannot  be  explained  in  this  way. 
Hume  himself  could  not  account  for  this  form 
without  assuming  a  very  active  "  mental  pro- 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  307 

penslty  to  feign,"  that  is,  without  admitting 
the  rational  nature.  Thus  sensationahsm  is 
canceled  ;  it  cannot  explain  the  form  of  know- 
ledge and  still  less  the  validity  of  knowledge. 
As  between  the  two  schools,  then,  we  must 
side  with  the  rationalists.  But,  unfortunately 
for  our  speculative  peace,  it  turns  out  when 
the  question  of  validity  is  raised  that  the  two 
schools  are  not  so  far  apart ;  for  the  apriori 
doctrine  itself  has  been  used  for  limiting 
knowledge  to  appearances  only.  Kant  and 
Hume  were  far  enough  apart  in  their  doctrine 
of  knowledge,  but  they  agreed  more  nearly  in 
their  metaphysics  than  is  commonly  recog- 
nized. Hume  said  that  reason  is  a  weak  faculty, 
so  that  by  way  of  speculation  we  can  attain  to 
no  knowledo^e  or  science.  Kant  said  that  the 
reason  is  full  of  illusions  when  it  transcends 
experience,  so  that  a  knowledge  of  things  in 
themselves,  or  other  than  appearances,  is  for- 
ever denied  to  us.  But  both  Hume  and  Kant 
admitted  that  we  cannot  practically  rest  in 
this  result,  but  must  fall  back  on  faith  in  the 
practical  needs  and  interests  of  life.    Thus  the 


308  PERSONALISM 

two  men,  who  were  antipodal  in  their  epistem- 
ology,  practically  coincided  in  their  metaphys- 
ics. Again,  Kant  belabored  Berkeley  for  his 
subjective  idealism,  but  here,  too,  the  differ- 
ence was  rather  epistemological  than  meta- 
physical ;  for  Kant's  own  doctrine  of  pheno- 
mena, when  made  consistent,  differs  little  from 
Berkeley's  view.  And,  in  general,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  apriorist  can  never  do  more  than  out- 
line the  general  forms  of  experience,  without 
giving  any  security  for  its  concrete  contents 
and  relations.  But  without  this  security  it  is 
plain  that  knowledge  is  theoretically  exposed 
to  doubt,  and  thus,  it  may  be  said,  skepticism 
finally  triumphs. 

The  answer  is  that  this  is  only  a  formal  tri- 
umph of  no  practical  significance.  For  a  uni- 
versal skepticism  is  really  none.  It  casts  equal 
doubt  upon  everything,  and  thus  leaves  all  our 
beliefs  in  the  same  relation  to  one  another  as 
before.  The  only  significant  skepticism  is  one 
which  finds  ground  for  special  doubt,  and  the 
only  dangerous  skepticism  is  one  that  discred- 
its the  higher  interests  of  our  nature  in  the 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  309 

name  of  the  lower.  But  to  doubt  everything 
is  practically  to  doubt  nothing.  Such  a  doubt 
is  only  a  question  of  the  general  trustworthi- 
ness of  hfe,  and  this  question  can  be  solved 
only  in  living.  Theoretically  it  is  always  in- 
consistent, and  practically  it  becomes  only  a 
pretext  for  rejecting  anything  we  dislike.  For 
the  inferences  that  have  been  drawn  from  uni- 
versal skepticism  have  generally  been  illogical 
and  partisan.  One  of  the  humors  of  the  his- 
tory of  thought  is  the  zeal  with  wdiich  Hume's 
doctrine  has  been  played  off  against  religion, 
in  complete  unconsciousness  of  the  fact  that 
it  is  quite  as  effective  against  science.  In  both 
cases  the  true  conclusion  is  that  by  way  of 
speculation  we  can  justify  neither  religion  nor 
science ;  but  since  speculation  itself  is  discred- 
ited, we  need  not  be  concerned  at  its  failure. 
But  life  still  remains  with  all  its  practical  in- 
terests, and  we  are  permitted  to  believe  and 
assume  whatever  this  practical  hf  e  may  suggest 
or  demand,  and  that  without  being  molested 
by  speculative  philosophy.  It  is  true  that  no- 
thing can  be  speculatively  justified,  and  just  as 


310  PERSONALISM 

little  can  anything  be  speculatively  discredited. 
Logic  and  reason  being  set  aside  as  guides  of 
life,  our  instincts  remain  and  we  may  live  by 
them  if  we  choose.  As  was  pointed  out  in  the 
first  lecture,  we  might  even  become  nihilists 
in  metaphysics  without  changing  any  practical 
belief  or  expectation.  For  life  is  as  it  is  and 
may  well  be  worth  living,  whatever  our  meta- 
physics ;  and  for  all  we  can  say  life  may  go  on 
through  an  indefinite  variety  of  future  forms, 
whatever  our  metaphysics.  The  fearsome  con- 
clusions drawn  by  the  skeptic  are  due  to  the 
attempt  to  reason  after  reason  has  been  dis- 
credited. 

We  are  greatly  helped  in  this  matter  by  the 
growing  insight  into  the  practical  nature  of 
belief.  One  of  the  superstitions  of  a  superfi- 
cial intellectualism  has  been  the  fancy  that 
belief  should  always  be  the  product  of  formal 
logical  processes.  But,  in  fact,  the  great  body 
of  our  fundamental  beliefs  are  not  deductions 
but  rather  formulations  of  life.  Our  practical 
life  has  been  the  o-reat  source  of  belief  and 
the  constant  test  of  its  practical  validity,  that 


THE   PERSONAL  WORLD  311 

is,  of  its  truth.  Such  beliefs  are  less  a  set  of 
reasoued  principles  than  a  body  of  practical 
postulates  and  customs  which  were  born  in 
life,  which  express  life,  and  in  which  the  fun- 
damental interests  and  tendencies  of  the  mind 
find  expression  and  recognition.  In  this  way 
the  great  organism  of  belief  is  built  up.  It 
grows  out  of  life  itself.  It  is  wrought  out  in 
action  rather  than  in  speculation,  and  has  the 
significance  of  any  other  great  natural  pro- 
duct. As  soon  as  we  bring  the  order  of  life 
and  belief  under  the  notion  of  law,  we  see 
that  it  has  in  a  way  cosmic  significance.  It 
is  no  accident  or  whim  of  the  individual,  but 
is  rooted  in  the  nature  of  things.  Thus  the 
great  catholic  beliefs  of  humanity  become  ex- 
pressions of  reality  itself,  and  on  any  theory 
of  knowledge  they  must  be  allowed  to  stand, 
unless  there  be  some  positive  disproof.  Their 
teleological  nature  is  manifest.  They  are  not 
here  for  themselves,  but  for  what  they  can 
help  us  to.  They  are  the  expressions  of  life 
and  also  the  instruments  by  which  life  realizes 
itself.    This  insight  is  a  great  advance  upon 


312  PERSONALISM 

the  method  of  rigor  and  vigor,  which  sought 
formally  to  deduce  whatever  is  to  be  beheved. 
At  last  life  and  experience  themselves  are  in- 
stalled as  the  great  source  of  practical  belief, 
and  we  have  sufficiently  recovered  from  the 
superstition  of  intellectualism  to  be  able  once 
more  to  trust  the  order  of  life  and  our  moral 
and  spiritual  instincts. 

Science,  we  have  before  said,  must  always 
be  classificatory  and  descriptive,  and  can  never 
deal  with  the  true  causes  and  reasons  of  thing's. 
This,  we  have  pointed  out,  is  true  even  for 
dynamical  science,  which  many  think  gives  the 
real  agencies  of  the  world.  It  should  be  added 
as  an  implication  of  this  fact,  that  the  several 
sciences  should  deal  with  their  various  classes 
of  facts  as  they  are  given  in  experience,  with- 
out distorting  them  to  make  them  fit  some 
other  group.  What  we  really  desire  is  a  deal- 
insc  with  the  facts  in  accordance  with  their 
true  nature,  and  not  a  wresting  of  the  facts  for 
the  sake  of  some  all-inclusive  generalization 
which  explains  nothing.  Oversight  of  the  rel- 
ative and  nominalistic  nature  of  much  of  our 


THE   PERSONAL   WORLD  313 

classification,  together  with  the  unchastened 
hankering  after  totality  and  systematic  com- 
pleteness, is  perpetually  leading  the  dogmatic 
mind  to  sweep  all  things  together  into  some 
vague  but  pretentious  generalization  which 
promises  to  make  all  things  one,  but  which 
succeeds  only  by  ignoring  all  the  essential 
characters  of  things. 

This  resolute  adherence  to  experience  is  a 
counsel  of  perfection  which  cannot  be  too 
much  insisted  upon.  In  the  mental  realm  it  is 
of  such  importance  that  we  may  be  excused 
for  further  dwelling  upon  it.  In  this  realm 
beyond  all  others  there  has  been  a  tendency 
to  distort  the  facts,  or  to  substitute  something 
else  for  them.  In  fact  there  has  been  com- 
paratively little  properly  logical  and  scientific 
work  done  in  psychology.  A  truly  scientific 
procedure  under  the  guidance  of  a  critical 
logic  would  aim  of  course  to  find  what  the 
psychological  facts  are  without  any  admixture 
of  theory,  and  to  determine  their  laws  in  their 
own  terms.  This  would  give  us  at  least  the 
psychological  facts,  and  might  also   give  us 


314  PERSONALISM 

some  of  the  uniformities  that  obtain  among 
them.  Unfortunately,  for  various  reasons, 
another  method  has  been  largely  followed. 
The  result  is  that  theories  about  the  facts  have 
very  largely  been  substituted  for  the  facts,  and 
various  metaphors,  drawn  from  the  physical 
realm,  have  wrought  no  small  damage.  It  is 
plain  that  language  in  this  region  must  be  fig- 
urative or  metaphorical.  We  have  no  direct 
means  of  telling  or  describing  our  internal 
states  except  by  the  use  of  physical  figures, 
which  never  accurately  represent  the  facts,  but 
which  we  set  forth  as  symbols  of  the  facts,  in 
the  hope  that  others  may  understand  us.  But 
when,  as  often  happens,  the  figure  itself  is 
mistaken  for  the  fact,  then  confusion  lieth  at 
the  door.  There  is  really  no  physical  fact  or 
analogy  that  rightly  represents  any  intellect- 
ual fact  or  process  whatever.  But  by  identi- 
fying the  physical  figure  with  the  mental  fact, 
it  becomes  easy  to  mistake  an  exegesis  of  the 
metaphor  for  a  dealing  with  the  fact.  Thus 
language  has  been  a  great  source  of  aberration 
in  psychology.    Another  source  of  error  closely 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  315 

allied  to  this  is  the  fact  that  we  tend  to  think 
of  things  under  space  forms  and  to  substitute 
the  body  for  the  personality.  This  tendency 
also  serves  to  hide  the  mental  facts  from  us 
in  their  true  nature,  and  when  it  is  finished 
it  not  infrequently  bringeth  forth  materialism. 
The  mythologies  of  cerebral  psychology  serve 
as  illustration.  For  errors  of  this  kind  the 
sufBcient  prescription  is  to  adhere  to  the  con- 
crete experience.  When  the  mental  facts  are 
seen  in  their  true  nature,  the  impossibility  of 
assimilating  them  to  any  kind  of  physical  fact 
is  at  once  obvious. 

The  same  prescription  must  be  observed  in 
dealing  with  the  physical  conditions  of  the 
mental  life.  The  relations  of  mind  and  body 
can  be  described  only  in  terms  of  concomitant 
variation.  From  an  inductive  standpoint  the 
causality  between  them  is  mutual;  that  is, 
physical  states  are  accompanied  by  various 
mental  states,  and  conversely  various  mental 
states  are  accompanied  by  physical  states. 
There  is  a  field  here  for  study  of  these  con- 
comitant variations,   a   knowledge    of  which 


316  PERSONALISM 

may  have  considerable  practical  value.  But 
we  must  be  equally  careful  here  to  confine 
ourselves  to  the  data  of  experience  and  not 
proceed  to  romantic  excesses  of  theory  as  has 
often  been  done.  A  misunderstanding  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  energy  has  led 
to  some  very  naive  work  on  the  part  of  psy- 
chologists and  physicists  aHke.  It  has  been 
thouofht  that  we  must  never  hold  that  the 
mind  affects  the  body  or  that  the  body  affects 
the  mind,  because  to  do  so  would  be  to  violate 
this  great  doctrine,  which  is  often  mentioned 
as  the  corner-stone  of  science.  If  we  take  this 
notion  in  earnest  it  would  imply  that  our 
thoughts  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
the  control  of  our  bodies,  and  that  our  physi- 
cal conditions  contain  no  reason  for  our  men- 
tal states.  Of  course  the  scientific  doctrine 
contains  no  warrant  for  any  such  romantic 
nonsense  as  this.  The  doctrine  itself  simply 
af&rms  a  certain  quantitative  equivalence  in 
the  transformation  of  energy,  and  that  only 
on  certain  assumed  conditions.  It  does  not 
tell  us,  for  instance,  that  there  might  not  be 


i 


THE   PERSONAL  WORLD  317 

direction  of  our  bodies  from  some  spiritual 
principle  in  interaction  with  them ;  it  leaves 
that  to  be  decided  by  experience.  Within  the 
inorganic  realm  there  is  good  reason  for  be- 
lieving that  this  equivalence  is  maintained, 
thouo'h  even  here  we  must  beware  of  erectino^ 
the  doctrine  into  an  absolute  principle.  This 
would  be  to  fall  a  prey  to  the  uncritical  dog- 
matic desire  for  totality  in  the  physical  realm. 
But  whether  our  thoughts  and  purposes  have 
any  influence  upon  our  physical  states  is  to 
be  determined  by  experience  only,  and  in  con- 
ducting experiments  for  deciding  the  matter 
almost  any  one  is  as  wise  as  the  wisest  physi- 
cist. If  anything  more  than  a  small  measure 
of  good  sense  were  needed,  sufficient  evidence 
would  be  found  in  the  emphasis  which  the 
medical  world  is  now  placing  on  mental  states 
as  cause  or  cure  of  disease.  Discounting,  then, 
the  vagaries  of  continuity  theorists,  we  may 
look  for  such  laws  as  we  may  discover  for  the 
interaction  of  physical  and  mental  states,  and 
make  what  use  we  can  of  them  without  being- 
disturbed  by  the  conservation  of  energy.  In 


318  PERSONALISM 

general  we  must  maintain  a  somewhat  agnostic 
attitude  towards  all  speculation  on  this  sub- 
ject, which  goes  beyond  some  few  principles 
which  may  be  verified  in  experience.  Such  are 
the  laws  of  concomitant  development,  laws  of 
habit,  laws  of  health,  laws  of  rest  and  repair, 
general  laws  of  the  mutual  influence  of  body 
on  mind  and  mind  on  body.  We  know  the 
physical  echoes  the  mental,  and  that  the  men- 
tal varies  with  the  physical.  Laws  of  this  kind 
lie  open  to  investigation,  but  whatever  lies  be- 
yond them  in  the  way  of  abstract  speculation 
must  be  received  with  the  utmost  caution. 

Not  to  form  abstract  theories  but  to  formu- 
late and  understand  this  personal  life  of  ours 
is  the  first  and  last  duty  of  philosophy.  This 
must  be  done  in  its  own  terms.  To  tell  us 
that  this  life  as  lived  is  a  case  of  matter  and 
motion  is  nonsense.  To  tell  us  that  this  life 
is  explained  by  matter  and  motion  is  equally 
nonsense.  This  is  simply  to  introduce  an  ab- 
straction from  experience  as  the  explanation 
of  experience.  We  must  indeed  be  careful  to 
recosmize  the  order  of  law  which  we  call  na- 


THE   PERSONAL   WORLD  319 

ture,  but  we  must  also  be  careful  not  to  erect 
it  into  any  self-sufficient  existence  or  power 
that  does  thino['s  on  its  own  account.  For  us 
nature  is  only  an  order  of  uniformity,  estab- 
lished and  maintained  by  an  ever-living  and 
ever-acting  Intelligence  and  Will.  Nature  is 
a  function  of  the  will  and  purpose  of  the  ever- 
present  God.  And  this  uniformity,  so  far  from 
oppressing  us  or  destroying  our  freedom,  is 
the  absolute  pre-supposition  of  our  having 
any  freedom  or  rational  life  whatever.  It  is  a 
fancy  of  dogmatic  naturalism  that  a  system 
of  law  shuts  up  everything  to  a  rigid  fixity 
which  can  be  modified  only  by  irruption  and 
violence ;  but  this  is  true  only  for  a  fictitious 
system,  the  product  of  the  dogmatic  imagina- 
tion. In  actual  experience  we  find  an  order 
of  law  and  we  also  find  that  order  within  cer- 
tain limits  pliable  to  our  will  and  aims.  The 
order  of  law  is  the  one  thing  that  founds 
our  control  of  nature,  and  by  means  of  it  we 
continue  to  bring  to  pass  many  things  which 
the  system  of  law,  left  to  itself,  would  never 
accomplish.  All  machines  of  human  invention 


320  PERSONALISM 

owe  their  value  to  the  order  of  law,  but  that 
order  alone  would  never  have  produced  any 
of  them.  We  plant  some  wheels  and  shafting 
at  the  foot  of  a  waterfall,  and  the  force  of 
gravity  is  at  our  service  for  the  driving  of 
looms,  the  grinding  of  flour,  the  lighting 
of  a  city,  etc.,  but  gravity  alone  would  never 
have  done  it.  The  order  of  law  is  a  pre-sup- 
position  of  it  all,  but  we  count  for  something 
after  all. 

This  is  the  way  the  facts  lie  in  experience, 
and  when  we  duly  consider  it  we  see  that  the 
uniformity  we  call  law  is  by  no  means  incom- 
patible with  the  self-direction  we  call  freedom. 
Even  in  thought  itself,  as  we  saw  in  discuss- 
ing freedom,  uniformity  can  as  little  dispense 
with  freedom  as  freedom  can  dispense  with 
uniformity.  The  laws  of  thought,  which  are 
absolute  uniformities  of  reason,  do  not  insure 
right  thinking  without  the  self-control  of  the 
free  spirit.  There  is  no  self-control  without 
the  laws,  and  there  is  no  effective  rationality 
without  the  self-control.  And  in  the  mental 
life  as  a  whole  we  find  the  same  fact ;  there 


THE  PERSONAL  WORLD  321 

are  laws  which  found  self-control,  and  there 
is  self-control  which  realizes  itself  through 
these  laws.  If  there  were  no  dependable  order 
in  our  mental  states,  all  self -direction,  educa- 
tion, mental  development,  mutual  intercourse 
would  cease. 

When  it  comes  to  combination,  the  order  of 
law  merely  prescribes  the  outcome  or  result- 
ant of  the  component  factors.  If  magnets  are 
revolved  under  certain  conditions,  there  will 
be  an  electric  current.  If  a  lighted  match  be 
touched  to  dry  gunpowder,  there  will  be  an 
explosion.  If  a  certain  law  is  passed  under 
given  social  conditions,  it  will  have  certain 
consequences.  The  consequences  are  at  once 
uniform  and  conditional.  The  laws  will  apply 
to  all  conditions  if  they  arise,  but  do  not  pre- 
scribe how  the  conditions  shall  arise  nor  what 
they  shall  be.  In  this  respect  they  are  hke 
the  rules  of  grammar,  which  never  tell  us- 
what  shall  be  said,  but  only  how  it  shall  be 
said.  The  system  of  law,  then,  as  experienced, 
is  no  self-inclosed  system,  but  one  capable 
of  receiving  modifications  from  without,  yet 


322  PERSONALISM 

•without  any  violation  of  the  laws.  Thus  for 
every  believer  in  freedom  there  are  mental 
states  or  acts  which  cannot  be  deduced  from 
the  antecedent  mental  states.  By  their  very 
nature  they  lie  beyond  scientific  explanation, 
yet  when  they  have  arisen  they  become  subject 
to  the  fundamental  laws  of  mental  action. 
So  with  our  sensations,  they  cannot  be  de- 
duced from  the  antecedent  state  of  mind,  but 
are  excited  from  without.  But  after  they  have 
been  excited  they  then  combine  according  to 
certain  laws  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the 
mind.  Hence  the  integrity  of  the  mental  order 
does  not  consist  in  a  self-inclosed  continuity 
of  mental  states,  but  in  the  identity  of  the 
mental  laws  which  determine  the  combina- 
tion and  succession  of  mental  states,  however 
produced.  The  same  must  be  said  of  the  cos- 
mical  order.  Here,  too,  there  is  much  which 
cannot  be  explained  by  antecedent  states  of 
the  system.  Human  thought  and  purpose  have 
realized  themselves  in  the  physical  world,  and 
have  produced  effects  which  the  system,  left 
to  itself,  would  never  have  reached.  But  these 


THE   PERSONAL  WORLD  323 

interventions  violate  no  laws  of  nature.  The 
effect  produced  enters  at  once  into  the  great 
web  of  law,  and  is  combined  with  other  effects 
according  to  a  common  scheme.  Hence  the 
integrity  of  the  cosmic  order  does  not  con- 
sist in  a  self -in  closed  movement,  but  in  the 
subjection  of  all  its  factors  to  the  same  gen- 
eral laws.  It  is  only  in  this  sense  that  we 
can  speak  of  the  continuity  of  nature.  The 
continuity  is  not  in  any  substantial  something 
called  nature,  but  solely  in  the  sameness  of 
the  laws  according  to  which  nature  is  admin- 
istered, and  of  the  purpose  which  is  being 
realized  through  it.^ 

In  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  nothing  what- 
ever can  be  explained  by  the  antecedent  state 
of  the  system.  When  we  have  had  experience 
of  the  order  the  antecedents  may  often  be  such 
as  to  lead  us  to  expect  certain  consequents, 
but  they  are  never  such  that  we  can  deduce 
the  consequents  as  any  necessary  implication. 
Even  the  familiar  order  of  life  is  opaque  to 
us,  and  we  know  not  the  ways  of  the  power 

^  See  Author's  Metaphysics,  revised  edition,  p.  267. 


324  PERSONALISM 

at  work.  We  can  as  little  deduce  the  later 
phases  from  the  earlier  as  we  can  deduce  the 
later  parts  of  an  opera  from  the  first  act.  It 
all  depends  on  what  is  going  on  in  the  invisi- 
ble world  of  powers  ;  and  for  even  the  show 
of  real  insight  we  must  have  recourse  either 
to  the  empty  notion  of  the  "  nature  of  things," 
or  to  the  conception  of  purpose  which  is  guid- 
ing the  power.  Temporal  and  spatial  antece- 
dents explain  nothing  so  long  as  we  remain 
in  the  phenomenal  realm.  Suppose  two  per- 
sons of  traditional  ways  of  thinking,  but  one 
traditionally  religious  and  the  other  tradition- 
ally irreligious,  should  discuss  the  question 
whether  a  cold  and  rainy  season,  with  resultant 
bad  crops,  were  a  divine  admonition  to  men, 
lest  they  forget.  They  would  likely  wrangle 
indefinitely  over  the  adequacy  or  inadequacy 
of  the  "  antecedents,"  whereas  the  only  real 
question  would  be  whether  the  event,  taken 
in  connection  with  all  its  circumstances,  sug- 
gested purpose  on  the  part  of  the  hidden 
power. 

Thus  I  have  sought  to  explain  and  illustrate 


THE   PERSONAL   WORLD  325 

what  is  meant  by  speaking  of  nature  as  a  func- 
tion of  will  and  purpose,  and  to  do  it  in  such 
a  way  as  shall  conserve  the  interest  of  all  sane 
and  sober  science  of  the  non-dogmatic  type, 
and  at  the  same  time  provide  for  the  higher 
moral  and  spiritual  interests  of  humanity.  Na- 
ture is  not  here  for  its  own  sake,  or  to  keep 
^M  V^  a  constant  quantity.  If  we  are  in 
a  personal  world,  the  final  cause  of  nature 
must  be  sought  in  the  personal  and  moral  realm. 
Criticism  frees  us  from  all  the  naturalistic  night- 
mares of  necessity  and  a  self-running  material 
world,  and  allows  us  to  trust  our  higher  human 
instincts  once  more.  Philosophy  replaces  the 
infinitely  far  God  by  the  God  who  is  infinitely 
near,  and  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being.  But  for  the  practical  realization 
of  this  divine  presence,  logic  and  speculation 
can  do  little  for  us.  This  behef  must  be  lived 
to  acquire  any  real  substance  or  controlling 
character.  This  is  the  case  with  all  practical 
and  concrete  beliefs.  If  we  ignore  them  prac- 
tically we  may  soon  accost  them  skeptically ; 
and  they  vanish  like  a  fading  gleam.    Or  we 


326 


PEKSONALISM 


may  build  them  into  life  and  organize  our  lives 
around  them,  and  they  become  "  truths  that 
wake  to  perish  never."  '^  To  as  many  as  re- 
ceive him,  to  them  gives  he  power  to  become 
the  sons  of  God." 


®be  fiitoetisibe  pre?? 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


THE   IMMANENCE 
OF   GOD 

BY 

BOEDE]S^   P.  B0W:N^E 

"  A  very  sane  and  a  very  readable  book,  at 
once  profound  in  thought  and  intelligible  in 
expression." 

The  Outlook 

"  A  suggestive  and  helpful  discussion  of  a 
theological  conception  much  in  favor  among 
thinkers  to-day." 

The  Baptist  Argus 

"The  four  chapters  of  this  little  volume, 
*God  and  Nature,'  '  God  and  History,'  'God 
and  the  Bible,'  and  '  God  and  Religion,'  con- 
tain much  food  for  reflection.  One  cannot 
read  them  without  carrying  away  certain 
truths  indelibly  impressed  upon  his  mind. 
They  are  worthy  of  their  position  as  the 
ripest  thoughts  of  a  theist  without  rival  in 
this  country." 

Boston  Transcript. 

16mo,  $1 .00  net.     Postage  8  cents. 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  COMPANY 

BOSTON  NEW   YORK 


SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACIL  J 


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